Erzgebirge

“ In the Saxon Erzgebirge the forests have lost all their wildness, and plantations of firs and oaks grow in regular order, all nearly of a height, with no trees towering into prominence, and the mountain has the trimmed and symmetrical appearance of a nursery. ”

“ To the Russell Sitz.— We traverse the Schlossbrunngasse and pass on to the highway leading to the Jägersaal; passing the bowling-green, we reach the forest, and, after about eight minutes’ walk, an open space, where, turning to the left, we ascend for eighteen minutes, and arrive at the Russell Sitz, a neat little place on a rock, with a fine view of the Erzgebirge through an opening in the woods. ”

“ The basin is everywhere heaving with undulations, patched and striped with firs and the lines of trees along the highways, while a few ponds gleam in some of the deepest hollows. A few widely scattered cottages, or the white walls of a farmstead, dot the green surface of the fields; and such is the general character of the scenery all the way from the Erzgebirge to Prague—indeed, all the central region of Bohemia. One league, with small differences, is but a repetition of the other. ”

“ The Erzgebirge (Czech Rudo Horí) , which form the north-west frontier, have an average altitude of 2600 ft., and as their highest point, the Keilberg (4080 ft.) . The numerous mining villages, the great number of cultivated areas and the easy passes, traversed by good roads, give those mountains in many places the aspect of a hilly undulating plain. Several of the villages are built very near the summit of the mountains, and one of them, Gottesgab (pop. about 1500) , lies at an altitude of 3345 ft., the highest place in Bohemia and central Germany. ”

“ ERZGEBIRGE, a mountain chain of Germany, extending in a W.S.W. direction from the Elbe to the Elstergebirge along the frontier between Saxony and Bohemia. Its length from E.N.E. to W.S.W. is about 80 m., and its average breadth about 25 m. The southern declivity is generally steep and rugged, forming in some places an almost perpendicular wall of the height of from 2000 to 2500 ft.; while the northern, divided at intervals into valleys, sometimes of great fertility and sometimes wildly romantic, slopes gradually towards the great plain of northern Germany. ”

“ To the east the Thuringian Forest is connected by the plateau of the Frankenwald with the Fichtelgebirge. This group of mountains, occupying what may be regarded as ethnologically the centre of Germany, forms a hydrographical centre, whence the Naab flows southward to the Danube, the Main westward to the Rhine, the Eger eastward to the Elbe, and the Saale northward, also into the Elbe. In the north-east the Fichtelgebirge connects itself directly with the Erzgebirge, which forms the northern boundary of Bohemia. ”

“ Sometimes we go for miles through some enchanting valley, lying like a paradise between the mountains, while the distant, white Alps look on it from afar; sometimes over swelling ranges of hills, where we can see to the right the valley of the Danube, threaded by his silver current and dotted with white cottages and glittering spires, and farther beyond, the blue mountains of the Bohemian Forest. To the left, the range of the Styrian Alps stretches along the sky, summit above summit, the farther ones robed in perpetual snow. ”

“ The first lake which stood out, blue and bright, was the little mountain-lake, Egeri, the lake of Lucerne, Zug, Sarnen, and others. By degrees, the whole region was unvailed, and it was an enchanting scene. But now, lying there in its whole extent, in the full blaze of daylight, the beautiful, affluent earth, it was no longer remarkable for the attractiveness of its beauty. Every object seemed so miserably small, and human beings as mere nothings. The landscape lay there, immovable and lifeless, like a map. ”

“ A thousand rills and rivulets and brawling brooks streaked the green slopes with threads and lines of white; mosses and lichens softened the black rock-masses; blooming heather, and a plant with fine red and yellow leaf gave color to the heights between the sombre greenness of the fir forests below and the whiteness of the snow-fields above. I have never before seen such stupendous precipices, such tremendous heights; neither Switzerland nor Mexico, Alps nor Cordilleras lift themselves in so precipitous ascent. ”

“ Hundreds of laborers are at work, and from the appearance of the foundations, many years will be required to finish it. The lofty mountain-plain which we afterwards passed over, for eight or ten miles, divides the waters of the Danube from the Rhine. From the heights above Ulm, we bade adieu to the far, misty Alps, till we shall see them again in Switzerland. Late in the afternoon, we came to a lovely green valley, sunk as it were in the earth. Around us, on all sides, stretched the bare, lofty plains; but the valley lay below, its steep sides covered with the richest forest. ”

“ Ascending the ridge we looked off upon a sleeping world. Mists lay beneath like waves, clouds, like a sea. On one side the Oberland Alps stretched along the horizon their pale, blue-white peaks. Other mountains, indistinct in color and outline, chained round the whole horizon. ”

“ The Thames, the Danube, and the Rhine still roll their course, Mont Blanc stands firm with its snow-capped summit, and the Northern Lights gleam over the lands of the North; but generation after generation has become dust, whole rows of the mighty of the moment are forgotten, like those who already slumber under the hill on which the rich trader whose ground it is has built a bench, on which he can sit and look out across his waving corn-fields. ”

“ The exceptional wellbeing and intelligence of the people is no doubt to some extent referable to the physical features of their country. The Northern Alps seem to have been more or less laid out according to rule; valley is severed from valley by lofty and abrupt ridges; thus isolation and seclusion are enforced on the mountain communities. Here one can imagine that nature first planned a rolling hill-country and put in the mountains as an afterthought, planting them here and there at haphazard in isolated masses. ”

“ Many thousand feet below us we beheld four large lakes surrounded by green mountains and vallies glowing in the sun; beyond these lay the wide extended plains of Bavaria, clothed with glittering towns and villages, over which the eye wandered to a far distant horizon, bounded only by the clear blue sky.
Looking back we saw down into many a dark valley, out of which rose numberless snow peaks, and high above the rest the majestic Schneeberg, with its eternal glaciers, and at a yet greater distance the still more lofty peaks of the Salzburg chain ”

“ The descent from the Divide is rapid, and our attention is absorbed by the swiftly changing panorama. Close by are the mountains—their snowy pyramids holding entranced your eyes from far, far out on the plains. “In variety and harmony of form,” said Bayard Taylor of them: “in effect against the dark blue sky, in breadth and grandeur, I know of no external picture of the Alps which can be placed beside it. If you could take away the valley of the Rhone, and unite the Alps of Savoy with the Bernese Oberland, you might obtain a tolerable idea of this view of the Rocky Mountains.” ”

“ In fact, as the day grew lighter, it served to show more and more people arriving by all the different paths [Pg 87] of the mountain. There were then already several hundred men in the valley: woodcutters, charcoal burners, watermen, without reckoning the women and children.
Nothing more picturesque can be imagined than this halt in the midst of the snow, in the deep defiles, surrounded by tall pines towering to the skies; to the right, valleys linked with each other, stretching away far out of sight; to the left, the cloud-capp'd ruins of Falkenstein. ”

“ The ridge connecting these great peaks forms a lofty watershed flanked on the south by gently-rising glacier slopes and on the north by precipitous ice-clad cliffs and icefalls. Almost every route, therefore, leading from the north across this great connecting ridge constitutes an arduous ice-climb followed by a comparatively easy descent on the south side. Small wonder, then, that the guides of the Oberland, who live in close proximity to such a wonderful training ground, excel all others in the art of snow and ice mountaineering. ”

“ To say that the Berlin Falls begin two miles below the village is no more than the truth, since at this distance the river was sheeted in foam from shore to shore. For these two miles its bed is so thickly sown with rocks that it is like a river stretched on the rack. The whole river, every drop of it, is hemmed in by enormous masses of granite, forming a long, narrow, and rocky gorge, down which it bursts in one mad plunge, tossing and roaring like the Maelstrom. What fury! What force! The solid earth shakes, and the very air trembles. ”

“ On the northern side a mighty wall of rocks, many thousand feet high, rises out of dark pine forests, and beyond these appears, in hoary whiteness and surrounded by glaciers and eternal snows, the summit of the Dachstein or Schneeberg, the loftiest of the Styrian Alps, which we often beheld in the evening from our windows, glowing with the ruddy beams of the [Pg 95] setting sun long after all light had departed from the nearer and less elevated mountains. ”

“ The landscape had nothing of the bright smiling beauty of the south, nor the overpowering grandeur of the Alps, but there rested upon it a peculiar charm, dreamy and melancholy as its legendary world.
Deep down lay the valleys, wrapt in bluish shadows, while the heights round about were flooded by bright sunshine, and over the valleys and hills spread an infinite expanse of green forest, out of which, only here and there, a bare wall of rock emerged, or a brook plunged wildly downward, splashing and foaming as it went. ”

“ Mountains, plains, foreground, and far perspective, everything, in the Yezd district at any rate, is one neutral tint of brown, except for the snow lying on the rocks of the mountain-top, the long flakes of salt scattered here and there about the plain, or the continual moving mirage. Even at sunrise and sunset, when the sky and distant hills put on a colouring of glorious brilliancy, there is an utter [8] absence of those soft tones in the foreground which can only be given by sunlight in a humid atmosphere. ”

“ The snow still glistened on the distant mountains; but when the sun shone out, the broad valley below, clad in the luxuriance of summer, and extending for at least fifty miles with its woods, meadows and white villages, looked like a real Paradise. The long ridges over which we travelled extend for nearly a hundred and fifty miles—from the Elbe almost to the Danube. The soil is not fertile, the inhabitants are exceedingly poor, and from our own experience, the climate must be unhealthy. ”

“ THOUGH the faithful climber is, in his essence, a thoroughly domesticated man and rarely strays from his own home, the Alps, a spirit of unrest occasionally takes hold upon him and drives him forth to more distant regions. Seized with such a fit of wandering, the first days of July, 1888, found me camped on the right bank of the Berzingi glacier, where, in the cool air of the snow fields, on slopes white with rhododendron and with the silent unclimbed peaks above, I could rest from the rattle and roar of trains, the noise of buffets and the persecutions of the Custom-houses. ”

“ The mountains kept their heights; we alone came lower, all down a single dal. Most of the road was hewn out of the side of precipices—a gallery; great stones were set endwise about two feet apart on the outer edge, and sometimes bound together by an iron rail; a slope down which we rolled at a flying trot, coasted down—the roaring, foaming river below, far below. Close to us were falls and cascades and cataracts, and the stupendous mountains, the snow-capped rock-masses lifting straight up thousands of feet. ”

“ Numerous quarries, which supply the North German cities with stone for buildings and monuments, have been opened along the valley. The sandstone range of the Elbe unites in the east with the low Lusatian group, along the east of which runs the best road from northern Germany to Bohemia. Then comes a range of lesser hills clustering together to form the frontier between Silesia and Bohemia. The most western group is the Isergebirge, and the next the Riesengebirge, a narrow ridge of about 20 miles’ length, with bare summits. Excluding the Alps, the Schneekoppe (5266 ft.) ”

“ Two gigantic mountains, clad in pine forests to the summits, enclose the valley, the view of which, however, extends to full two miles, showing little peeps of farmhouses and mills along the river's bank, and high upon a great bold crag, the ducal castle of Eberstein. The day is hot but not sultry, for a light summer breeze is playing over the water, and, high up, the clouds move slowly on, now casting broad masses of mellow shadow over the deep-tinted forest. ”

“ Link in the Alps' globe-circling chain.
The sense of the sublime excited in us is due not to mere 'extension of space,' but to admiration of the excellence revealed by our larger range of vision. The barren ice-field is seen to water a thousand meadows, the destructive torrent to fertilise a whole province. The evil of the world seems for once contained within the good. ”

“ There are also passes through cross ridges that connect mountain chains, such as the Arlberg, that pierces a ridge extending between the northern and the central Alps. Passes of this sort are of great importance to life in the mountains, for, as a rule, they lead from one longitudinal valley to another, such valleys extending between ridges being the most fertile and protected districts in mountainous regions. ”