Views A-foot; Or, Europe Seen with Knapsack and Staff. Taylor Bayard
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are amusing. We never see oxen working here, but always cows, sometimes a single one in a cart, and sometimes two fastened together by a yoke across their horns. The women labor constantly in the fields; from our window we can hear the nut-brown maidens singing their cheerful songs among the vineyards on the mountain side. Their costume, too, is odd enough. Below the light-fitting vest they wear such a number of short skirts, one above another, that it reminds one of an animated hogshead, with a head and shoulders starting out from the top. I have heard it gravely asserted that the wealth of a German damsel may be known by counting the number of her "kirtles." An acquaintance of mine remarked, that it would be an excellent costume for falling down a precipice!
We have just returned from a second visit to Frankfort, where the great annual fair filled the streets with noise and bustle. On our way back, we stopped at the village of Zwingenberg, which lies at the foot of the Melibochus, for the purpose of visiting some of the scenery of the Odenwald. Passing the night at the inn there, we slept with one bed under and two above, and started early in the morning to climb up the side of the Melibochus. After a long walk through the forests, which were beginning to change their summer foliage for a brighter garment, we reached the summit and ascended the stone tower which stands upon it. This view gives one a better idea of the Odenwald, than that from the Kaiser-stuhl at Heidelberg. In the soft autumn atmosphere it looked even more beautiful. After an hour in that heaven of uplifted thought, into which we step from the mountain-top, our minds went with the path downward to earth, and we descended the eastern side into the wild region which contains the Felsenmeer, or Sea of Rocks.
We met on the way a student from Fulda—a fine specimen of that free-spirited class, and a man whose smothered aspiration was betrayed in the flashing of his eye, as he spoke of the present painful and oppressed condition of Germany. We talked so busily together that without noticing the path, which had been bringing us on, up hill and down, through forest and over rock, we came at last to a halt in a valley among the mountains. Making inquiries there, we found we had gone wrong, and must ascend by a different path the mountain we had just come down. Near the summit of this, in a wild pine wood, was the Felsenmeer—a great collection of rocks heaped together like pebbles on the sea shore, and worn and rounded as if by the action of water: so much do they resemble waves, that one standing at the bottom and looking up, cannot resist the idea, that they will flow down upon him. It must have been a mighty tide whose receding waves left these masses piled up together! The same formation continues at intervals, to the foot, of the mountains. It reminded me of a glacier of rocks instead of ice. A little higher up, lies a massive block of granite called the "Giant's Column." It is thirty-two feet long and three to four feet in diameter, and still bears the mark of the chisel. When or by whom it was made, remains a mystery. Some have supposed it was intended to be erected for the worship of the Sun, by the wild Teutonic tribes who inhabited this forest; it is more probably the work of the Romans. A project was once started, to erect it as a monument on the battle-field of Leipsic, but it was found too difficult to carry into execution.
After dining at the little village of Reichelsdorf in the valley below, where the merry landlord charged my friend two kreutzers less than myself because he was not so tall, we visited the Castle of Schönberg, and joined the Bergstrasse again. We walked the rest of the way here; long before we arrived, the moon shone down on us over the mountains, and when we turned around the foot of the Heiligenberg, the mist descending in the valley of the Neckar, rested like a light cloud on the church spires.
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