Harz Mountains

“ When the rosy dawn awakes he will come who cut down our sisters; and as they are fallen, so must we. Desolate will be the spot that saw us so oft united in joy, lonely the moonlight that shone on our dance. The nymphs of the lake and the mountain stream will look out for us, longing for our coming, and ask, 'Where are our friends of the mountain? Why do they not descend when the queen of the stars illuminates our palace?' Happy sisters, ye are as yet safe from our mournful fate, for ye are secure in your retreat from the barbarian! ”

“ The district is traversed by excellent roads in all directions.
The northern summits are destitute of trees, but the lower slopes of the Upper Harz are heavily wooded with pines and firs. Between the forests of these stretch numerous peat-mosses, which contain in their spongy reservoirs the sources of many small streams. On the Brocken are found one or two arctic and several alpine, plants. In the Lower Harz the forests contain a great variety of timber. The oak, elm and birch are common, while the beech especially attains an unusual size and beauty. ”

“ There were two castles in the Harz mountains, both of which bore the name of Staufenburg; that near Zorge, an hour and a half from the beautiful ruins of Convent Walkenried. It is said to have been occupied during the Thirty Years' War. When built or by whom destroyed are matters of conjecture. The Staufenburg of our tale is near Gittelde. Some derive the name from the idol Stuvo, or Stuffo, once set up on the mountain. The mountain was so steep that Staufen, or Stufen—steps—were used in climbing it, hence probably the name. ”

“ The mountain—on which are decaying bits of walls, where, until a few years ago, a strong square tower, eighty feet in height, with openings here and there, looked solemnly down on the vale—is cut off sharp on the east, west, and south sides from its wooded brethren that rise high above it, only on the north side sloping gradually to its base; and it is on this side one climbs to the spot where Kaiser Henry the Vogler, or Fowler, had a decoy for birds. ”

“ The Germans are genuine lovers of mountains, but there is something prosaically thorough about their Schwärmerei. Like the well-informed and communicative frequenter of picture galleries, they are determined to miss nothing themselves, and to see that the other visitors miss nothing either. And so all well-behaved travellers in the Harz walk along well-kept paths, sit down on rustic benches, are admonished by notice-boards when to admire the view, and are provided at suitable 162 intervals with the means of drinking beer and coffee. Nothing is wanting—not even the professional jodeler. ”

“ The vast forests that cover the mountain slopes supply the materials for a considerable trade in timber. Much wood is exported for building and other purposes, and in the Harz itself is used as fuel. The sawdust of the numerous mills is collected for use in the manufacture of paper. Turf-cutting, coarse lace-making and the breeding of canaries and native song-birds also occupy many of the people. Agriculture is carried on chiefly on the plateaus of the Lower Harz ”

“ In the middle of fruitful fields and green meadows not far from Scharzfels rises the ball-shaped alabaster Romerstein, on whose summit ragged cliffs rise in the air resembling the ruins of a castle.
In the days before authentic history a race of giants dwelt hereabout, who, fearing the mountain-spirit, [1] piled up these cliffs and constructed thus a giant fortress, of which these cliffs are the proud remains. ”

“ The inhabitants are descended from various stocks. The Upper and Lower Saxon, the Thuringian and the Frankish races have all contributed to form the present people, and their respective influences are still to be traced in the varieties of dialect. The boundary line between High and Low German passes through the Harz. The Harz was the last stronghold of paganism in Germany, and to that fact are due the legends, in which no district is richer, and the fanciful names given by the people to peculiar objects and appearances of nature. ”

“ This lordly cliff and the Westerberg were once connected, it is said, by a granite wall, which was rent asunder by flood and storm from the Brocken; and according to one legend, Princess Ilse issues from the rock at dawn, when the weather is mild, robed in white satin, her long golden hair floating around her like a veil, a diadem of mountain crystal adorning her regal brow, lays aside her costly array, bathes in the crystal stream, and combs her golden hair. ”

“ At midnight, when in storm and rain, Hackelberg with horse and dogs tears through the Thuringian Forest, the Harz, and the Hackel Forest, the night or death owl flies before him, which the people call the Tut-Osel.
The wanderer, when he hears the ghostly hunt, listens in terror to the barking of dogs, and hears the hu! ”

“ He looked around and saw a cleft in the mountain, from which issued smoke. He went and looked in. It was the mouth of a cave, in the deeps of which pitch and sulphur flames with loud hissing enveloped each other, and in the midst of this fire-gulf he saw a human form, over which the flames swept without consuming it, and which sought, wailing and moaning, to escape, but fell ever back into the boiling heat, with wringing of hands and tearing of hair. ”

“ In the Black Forest the eternal Hunter and the eternal Jew are regarded as the same person. They both always carry a groschen in the pocket. In some parts of Germany the harrows are placed in the fields with the teeth together, that the wanderer may rest himself. According to some authorities, he may only rest Christmas night, and then only when he finds a plough in the field; only on that may he sit down.
Every seven years the Huntsman passes over the seven mining towns of the Harz, and woe to him who calls after him. ”

“ A sharp north wind shook the bare branches of the trees that grew thick on both sides of the way, blew the snow in the ravines, and heaped it to huge snow-drifts, which threatened the traveller unacquainted with the locality with danger.
The wind grew every moment more sharp and cutting, the snow deeper, and the difficulty greater for the tired horses to draw their weary load. ”

“ Near Kloster Ilfeld, close by the chaussée, stands on a mountain a huge boulder, which has a small hole through the centre.
All the servants from Nordhausen and the other surrounding places, when they drive into the forest the first time for wood, must creep three times through this hole—which is only done with difficulty; and as they creep in, and on the opposite side out, their comrades lash them with their whips.
If the new-comer will not indulge in this pastime, he must pay money. ”

“ The Harz forests with their rich stores of game attracted not seldom the hunt-loving princes of Brunswick to their deep shades, and horn and hound and the wild ho ho! hio hi! of the hunter were heard over mountain and vale.
Then came a calmer period for the old Staufenburg, as the retired seat of princely widows, and here lived, in the fourteenth century, the Duchess Elizabeth, widow of William the Younger. ”

“ The Harz is one of the richest mineral storehouses in Germany, and the chief industry is mining, which has been carried on since the middle of the 10th century. The most important mineral is a peculiarly rich argentiferous lead, but gold in small quantities, copper, iron, sulphur, alum and arsenic are also found. Mining is carried on principally at Klausthal and St Andreasberg in the Upper Harz. ”

“ In the mining town Wildemann there is a tradition of a wild man who gave the place its name.
Once a robber from the Thuringian Forest lived here in a cave with a wild woman; they were clothed with moss and the branches of fir-trees.
The knight Claus, founder of Clausthal, once saw this wild man on the Wildmann's Cliffs, with a fir-tree, torn up by the roots, in his hand, and a bear on his. back.
The Nimrod of the Rehbergerklippe. [1] [1] Rehbergerklippe—cliff of the stag mountain.
A legend of this gloomy wild mountain, at the base of which one drives from Clausthal to St. ”

“ LAKE McDONALD AND ITS TRAIL IN the northern part of Montana, towards the Canadian border, the Main Range of the Rocky Mountains has been rent and carved by glacial action during ages gone by, until the peaks, like tusks, stand separate and distinct in a mighty, serrated line. No one of these reaches so great a height as Shasta, Rainier or Hood, but here the huge, horned spine rises almost sheer from the sweep of tawny prairie, and not one, but hosts of pinnacles, sharp as lances, stand clean cut against the sky. ”

“ From above the rains and snows and winds are chiselling away its rocks and bearing them to the plains. In time the process of pushing up ceases; the process of grinding down goes on remorselessly, never pausing for a moment.
So the mountains are eternal only in the figurative sense. Actually their term of existence is strictly finite. Once the Australian Alps had their tremendous peaks, and hills of unmelting ice. To-day they have been ground down to below the line of perpetual snow, and along the gentle grades of the chief peak it is possible to drive a carriage to the very summit. ”

“ Hereafter, when I call up memories of the glorious, the view from this camping ground will come up. Looking cast, gorges opened to the distant Plains, then fading into purple grey. Mountains with pine-clothed skirts rose in ranges, or, solitary, uplifted their grey summits, while close be- hind, but nearly 3000 feet above us, towered the bald white crest of Long's Peak, its huge precipices red with the light of a sun long lost to our eyes. Close to us, in the caverned side of the Peak, was snow that, owing to its position, is eternal. ”

“ Then we emerged on the vast expanse of the glittering plains, and a sudden sweep of wind made the cold so intolerable that I had to go into a house to get warm. This was the last house we saw till we reached our destination that night. I never saw the mountain range look so beautiful—uplifted in every shade of transparent blue, till the sublimity of Long's Peak, and the lofty crest of Storm Peak, bore only unsullied snow against the sky. Peaks gleamed in living light ”

“ The glades which begin so softly are soon lost in the dark primæval forests, with their peaks of rosy granite, and their stretches of granite blocks piled and poised by nature in some mood of fury. The streams are lost in canyons nearly or quite inaccessible, awful in their blackness and darkness; every valley ends in mystery; seven mountain ranges raise their frowning barriers between us and the Plains, and at the south end of the park Long's Peak rises to a height of 14,700 feet, with his bare, scathed head slashed with eternal snow. The lowest part of the Park is 7500 feet high ”

“ Deep, vast canyons, all trending westwards, lie in purple gloom. Pine-clad ranges, rising into the blasted top of Storm Peak, all run westwards too, and all the beauty and glory are but the frame out of which rises—heaven-piercing, pure in its pearly luster, as glorious a mountain as the sun tinges red in either hemisphere—the splintered, pinnacled, lonely, ghastly, imposing, double-peaked summit of Long's Peak, the Mont Blanc of Northern Colorado. ”

“ You cannot see at first, or even for some time, that the gentle-looking hill is a mountain of five or six thousand feet above the level of the Rhigi Kulm in Switzerland. Persons who are familiar with the aspect of the Rocky Mountains are aware of the singular lack of dignity in those enormous elevations. They are merely big, without any superior beauty until you come to the favored spots of nature’s art, where some great contrast throws into appalling relief the gulf between the high and the low. ”

“ Each have their attractions, each their grandeur, each their sublimity, each their wonderful, awful silence, each their long and glorious landscape views, while, to each, the general contour is the same. In the point of altitude, the Rocky chain, as is well known to science, has the advantage; but, in historical science and lore, the famous Alps stand preeminent. True, it is from ignorance that we are led to concede this, because no man can give to the world the reminiscences of the Rocky Mountains. ”

“ These Foot Hills, which swell up uninterestingly from the plains on their eastern side, on their western have the appearance of having broken off from the next range, and the break is abrupt, and takes the form of walls and terraces of rock of the most brilliant colour, weathered and stained by ores, and, even under the grey sky, dazzling to the eyes. The driver thought he had understood the directions given, but he was stupid, and once we lost some miles by arriving at a river too rough and deep to be forded, and again we were brought up by an impassable canyon. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Long's Peak, 14,700 feet high, blocks up one end of Estes Park, and dwarfs all the surrounding mountains. From it on this side rise, snow-born, the bright St. Vrain, and the Big and Little Thompson. By sunlight or moonlight its splintered grey crest is the one object which, in spite of wapiti and bighorn, skunk and grizzly, unfailingly arrests the eye. From it come all storms of snow and wind, and the forked lightnings play round its head like a glory. It is one of the noblest of mountains, but in one's imagination it grows to be much more than a mountain. ”