summer’s evening as they pace the terrace in front of their hotel after supper. That meal usually consists of trout, the ubiquitous veal cutlet, and the beer of the country, which has a peculiar smoky flavour not unlike that of Irish whisky, and rather unpalatable until one is accustomed to it. The trout is much larger than our own, though not so delicate in flavour. The fish are often kept in tanks supplied by some breeding pond in connection with the hotels, so that it is easy to select the plumpest “forelle” for the frying-pan.
Hard by the inn lives the doctor. It is the business of this gentleman to attend those patients who believe in the Molkenkur, or efficacy of whey in cases of indisposition (chiefly ennui with the ladies). The doctor is the general friend and confidant of all the visitors. He sits at the head of the table d’hôte, and has a pleasant word or a prescription for everybody. He is something of an artist: he is something of an angler: he is something of a naturalist, and has a wonderful taste for shells and fossils. The morning after our arrival, he conducted our party over his museum, where, I am ashamed to say, I affected such a deep interest in his collection that he presented me with a fine specimen of the echinus coronatus, which I carried back to England with great care, and discovered the other day enshrined with old medicine bottles and superannuated boots in my bedroom cupboard.
The doctor sings a little, though he doesn’t play. His sister, on the other hand, plays a little, though she doesn’t sing. Therefore, when the ladies are tired of “Les Graces” upon the terrace (an ingenious game in which three nymphs toss light hoops of painted wood from one to another, by means of little rods of the same material), there is no difficulty—as indeed there never is anywhere in Germany—in getting up an amateur concert in the salle à manger. The male portion of the audience lounge smoking at the entrance door which opens on the terrace. The non-performing ladies—at least those who can, for their crinolines are beyond belief and almost beyond control—sit down and knit. The waiters subside. We look round the room and find ourselves the only English present: we have caught the Germans at home.
The excursions from Streitberg to the different points of interest are all within a few hours’ drive. The scenery is very beautiful and continually varied. It is generally like that of the Tyrol in miniature, but now and then one comes upon a copse or patch of meadow land, through which some trout stream leaping over boulders of half-embedded rock, or eddying round in pools of dark deep water, and lashed into creamy foam along its banks, reminds one of the anglers’ haunts in Devonshire.
We hired an indigenous carriage and native horses—both of great antiquity—and during our few days’ stay visited Muggendorf, the Riesenburg, Tuchersfeld, and the Castle of Rabenstein.
Muggendorf is in the heart of Franconian Switzerland, and is often made the rendezvous for tourists. In addition to the lovely scenery by which it is surrounded, it is famous for a cave called the Rosenmüller’s Höhle, which they say is interesting to the geologist. But a far more remarkable feature in this neighbourhood is the Riesenburg, or Giant’s Castle, an enormous natural vault, intersected by arches formed by the decomposition of the rock. It is open at the top, like the Pantheon at Rome, and is surrounded by crags and rugged soil. You may walk over the turf-covered crowns of some of these spurious arches, which really bear some resemblance to artificial work, and have thus suggested the familiar name of this natural phenomenon. Lichens, ferns, and tufts of grass are plentifully scattered, and spring from crevices in the rock, and the sun gleams in through little chinks, casting purple shadows here and there, across which long green lizards dart at the first approach of footsteps, and scramble out of sight. It is here, too, that the valley of the Wiesent is seen to best advantage,—now as rich meadow land, stretching to the river’s brink, now broken by wooded slopes jutting anglewise upon the plain, or dotted here and there, by huge masses of limestone in fantastic shapes. Accidents of colour, form, and composition, which delight the artist’s eye, are here in all variety, and have this advantage over the details of most landscape, that for the most part they are upon unbeaten ground, at least by English painters.
The village of Tuchersfeld, a few miles from this spot, consists of a cluster of cottages, built in the midst of enormous crags or pinnacles of rock, towering one above another to a giddy height. Some of them taper like huge obelisks, others resemble elongated cromlechs, and seem to rest on such slight foundations, that nothing but long acquaintance with the genius loci would allow one to forget the apparent danger which they threaten.
There is a famous cave near here—the “Sophienhöhle,” which, being an affair of torches, guides, and many florins, we did not go to see. It is full of fossil remains—bones of hyenas, bears, and deer, and I believe even antediluvian relics, something like 200 feet below the natural level of the ground. The owner allows none to be removed, no doubt deriving a little income from the fees paid by tourists, who would hardly care to visit the cave if stripped of its contents.
On the road to Rabenstein there is a little wirtschaft, or beershop, where we stayed to lunch, and the owner of which was one of those insatiable old ladies who, come of what nation they may, look upon the rest of mankind, and tourists in particular, as their legitimate prey, from whom the greatest bonus of remuneration is expected in return for the least possible amount of civility. Without the slightest necessity for it, she had thrust her son or servant on us as a guide, and we paid her for his unsought services, during a couple of hours, certainly as much as he could have earned in one hard day’s work. To our great surprise, however, she looked on the fee with supreme contempt, and, with many airs and scornful smiles, handed it back to us again, declaring she would not take it. Unfortunately for her, a German friend who was with me took her at her word, coolly pocketed the money, and drove off. As we returned that day the carriage stopped