Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 9/Up the Moselle - Part 5
UP THE MOSELLE.
Part V.
At Alf we dismiss the carriage, and walk up the gorge to Bertrich in the cool of the evening. The beauties of the way are only suggested in the darkness, but the air is fragrant and full of music. The song of the nightingale, however, overpowers all other sounds, and one sometimes wishes that this accomplished artist would distribute himself more evenly over the face of the earth. He manages a duet very well, but it is a mistake for him to attempt a symphony—the many voices mar each other’s distinctness. An agreeable surprise, in the shape of a supper of delicious trout, awaits us at the Post at Bertrich. The dawn discovers a new world, and we seem to have been transferred in the night to some luxurious nook in the neighbourhood of the bay of Naples: no wonder that the Romans thoroughly appreciated the baths of Bertrich! Bertrich lies in a basin in the gorge of the Uesbach, which is here 700 feet deep, and joins that of the Alf by the Castle of Arras. It is a centre of volcanic disturbance, which has produced here hills of the softest outline and the most lovely colour. There are three slag-heads on the slate towards the edge of the tableland; of these two have craters, the third, the Falkenley, has only a depression in the centre. The Roman Kessel or Cauldron is a most lovely spot, formed by an amphitheatre of hills; in the midst is another hill, where the inspector of the baths, Captain Steffers, has built a pretty Protestant church to commemorate his wife. The Catholic church stands on another rock, evidently on the ruins of a Roman temple. In 1843, when the baths were being enlarged, the old Roman fountain was discovered, five feet broad and seven feet long, hewn in the rock twenty-seven feet deep, and also a public bath, twelve feet square, in which lay a large amphora. Coins were also found on the same occasion, several of Constantine, and a gold Vespasian. By an old record the place was named after one Saint Berticlus, who lived here as a hermit; but as it was known to the Romans under the name of “Baudriaci Fontes,” the name must be older than the age of saints. The water of the baths is comfortably warm, about twenty-five or twenty-six degrees Reaumur, and by no means disagreeable to drink, although it contains a proportion of Glauber’s salt. Bertrich rejoices in a profusion of shade; and its avenue of noble limes, cooled by the airs from the brook, make it a most desirable retreat in the dog-days. It is just such a place as Horace recommended to Tyndaris at that season:
Hic in reductâ valle, Caniculæ
Vitabis æstus.
An invalid who really wished to get well would surely come here, instead of seeking one of the crowded fashionable baths. Here the mind, which has more to do with ill-health than the body, would find repose, exquisite scenery, moderate prices, simplicity, and regularity; and the temper would not suffer, as it infallibly must in those dens of thieves and gamblers which are resorted to by the idle and wealthy of all nations and those who prey on them. On the brink of the brook are several stacks of basaltic columns. If we follow the course of the Uesbach for about half a mile above Bertrich we come on a spot where a tributary brook leaps into it; and over the waterfall is a rustic bridge, and by the side of the glen a path leading through a most remarkable cavern, which is commonly called the cheese-cellar, but which would-be refinement has endeavoured to rebaptise the Fairies’ Grotto. It consists of columnar basalt, which has crystallised into spheröides, or rough balls, and forms a Fingal’s Cave on a small scale. Its picturesque effect is much enhanced by the beautiful trailing plants which hang from the dripping rocks above. Above this grotto the path leads into a road, which ascends a glen to the top of the platform, where stands the village of Hartheim. We mean to devote the day to a ramble in the volcanic scenery of the Eifel. From Hartheim we strike across a burnt-up, dreary, swelling upland to Gillenfeld, which is some eight English miles distant. This region bears the same relation to Bertrich that Arabia Deserta does to Arabia Felix. We are attracted by a fine specimen of an extinct volcano, looking like a miniature Vesuvius in form, behind which is a fringe of trees. On arriving there we find the fringe is the edge of a basin, which might be compared to a round fish-pond in a garden, save that it is vastly larger. And the moss on its margin is represented by beech-woods of moderate size. This basin is the Pulver Maar, or Powder Mere, so called from the volcanic gravel of which the banks consist, the grains of which are about the size of the gunpowder used for blasting rocks, soft to the touch, clean, and of a dull purple colour. This little tarn is a more perfect specimen of a volcanic crater lake (of which there are several in this country) even than the Lake of Laach, which some think may have been produced by other causes, and is not strictly circular. The Pulver Maar is 1,266 feet above the sea-level, and the rim of the crater 1,495; it is 6,700 feet round, and 2,300 in diameter, and in some places nearly 300 feet deep. The water has no visible inlet or outlet, but is always fresh, and of the usual green colour of lakes, not of the lovely blue of the Laacher See. It produces fish of several kinds, and crawfish of remarkably good flavour, as we found at the inn at Gillenfeld.
Alf, on the Moselle.
At Gillenfeld I parted with regret from my clerical friends, who went to explore the recesses of the Eifel in a country-cart, (which looked likely to set any bone they might happen to have dislocated, and dislocate all that might be in their places), and retraced my steps to Bertrich and, the next morning, to Alf. It was well worth while to see that glen again by daylight. The Castle of Arras stands in the junction of the Alf and Uesbach glens. If its nearly perpendicular rock was overgrown with wet brushwood, as I found it, it is no wonder that Archbishop Albero had some trouble to take the robber’s nest. It is said that the worthy prelate made a vow that no razor should come on his chin till he had accomplished the task—a vow the conditions of which do not seem very severe, unless indeed he had the same horror of clerical beards which distinguishes the Bishop of Rochester. Above Alf is the old Convent of Marienberg, of which little remains now but walls, and a few arches of which the mullions are gone. The forester has a collection of stuffed animals in an adjacent building, amongst them a fine wild-boar and some young ones, whose striped skins make them look as if they belonged to some other species of the pig genus; and hard by there is a restaurant where the passengers of the steamer have a good half-hour to refresh themselves on the ascending voyage, while the boat is making the long circuit of the promontory. Hence is seen perhaps the finest panoramic view of the Moselle, several reaches of which are visible at once. Especially beautiful are the folds of the hills behind Alf looking down the river. From Alf a short walk down the river round a rocky corner brings us to Bremm. This ancient town shows a long front of cross-beamed gables to the river, as if the houses had been built for the purpose of making picturesque reflections in the water. There is an English artist sketching them in a boat under the shade of a huge umbrella. He appears to have taken up his quarters here for the summer, from the number of his pictures that are lying at the inn in a finished and unfinished state, and to have acted wisely in doing so, as the rocky banks about Bremm are of the grandest, and the inn kept by Herr Amelinger appears to be one of the most comfortable on the Moselle.
On a tongue of flat land opposite Bremm is the shell of the Convent Stuben, looking very beautiful at dusk, and reflected in the still river, but disappointing in broad daylight, as all the architectural details have disappeared, and the hollows of the lancet-shaped windows only remain. The ground on which the ruin stands was once an island. One Egilof, a rich nobleman, gave the ground to the Abbot of Springiersbach, on condition that he would erect a nunnery here where his daughter Gisela might take refuge. It was chartered by Archbishop Albero in 1137 for the reception of 100 ladies, who are called in old records “sorores de insulâ beati Nicolai in Stuppâ.” In 1208 the convent came by gift into possession of a piece of the Holy Cross, taken at the storming of Constantinople out of the Church of St. Sophia, having been worked into a curiously-wrought table. This relic was carried away when the French overran the country, and is now supposed to be somewhere in the possession of the Duke of Nassau. There is a curious legend to the effect that the monks of Bremm being demoralised by the voluptuous songs of the numerous nightingales there, a certain saint banished all the birds to the island of Stuben. The nuns were found less susceptible to the impressions conveyed by the feathered songsters.