Views A-foot; Or, Europe Seen with Knapsack and Staff

by Bayard Taylor

I stayed in Göttingen two dull, dreary, miserable days, without getting much better. I took but one short walk through the city, in which I saw the outsides of a few old churches and got a hard fall on the pavement. Thinking that the cause of my illness might perhaps become its cure, I resolved to go on rather than remain in the melancholy—in spite of its black-eyed maidens, melancholy—Göttingen. On the afternoon of the second day, I took the post to Nordheim, about twelve miles distant. The Göttingen valley, down which we drove, is green and beautiful, and the trees seem to have come out all at once. we were not within sight of the Hartz, but the mountains along the Weser were visible on the left. The roads were extremely muddy from the late rains, so that I proceeded but slowly.

A blue range along the horizon told me of the Hartz, as I passed; although there were some fine side-glimpses through the hills, I did not see much of them till I reached Osterode, about twelve miles further. Here the country begins to assume a different aspect. The city lies in a narrow valley, and as the road goes down a steep hill towards it, one sees on each side many quarries of gypsum, and in front the gloomy pine mountains are piled one above another in real Alpine style. But alas! the city, though it looks exceedingly romantic from above, is one of the dirtiest I ever saw. I stopped at Herzberg, six miles farther, for the night. The scenery was very striking; and its effect was much heightened by a sky full of black clouds, which sent down a hail-storm as they passed over. The hills are covered with pine, fir and larch. The latter tree, in its first foliage, is most delicate and beautiful. Every bough is like a long ostrich plume, and when one of them stands among the dark pines, it seems so light and airy that the wind might carry it away. Just opposite Herzberg, the Hartz stands in its gloomy and mysterious grandeur, and I went to sleep with the pleasant thought that an hour's walk on the morrow would shut me up in its deep recesses.

The next morning I entered them. The road led up a narrow mountain valley, down which a stream was rushing—on all sides were magnificent forests of pine. It was glorious to look down their long aisles, dim and silent, with a floor of thick green moss. There was just room enough for the road and the wild stream which wound its way zigzag between the hills, affording the most beautiful mountain-view along the whole route. As I ascended, the mountains became rougher and wilder, and in the shady hollows were still drifts of snow. Enjoying every thing very much, I walked on without taking notice of the road, and on reaching a wild, rocky chasm called the "Schlucht," was obliged to turn aside and take a footpath over a high mountain to Andreasberg, a town built on a summit two thousand feet above the sea. It is inhabited almost entirely by the workmen in the mines.

The way from Andreasberg to the Brocken leads along the Rehberger Graben, which carry water about six miles for the oreworks. After going through a thick pine wood, I came out on the mountain-side, where rough crags overhung the way above, and through the tops of the trees I had glimpses into the gorge below. It was scenery of the wildest character. Directly opposite rose a mountain wall, dark and stern through the gloomy sky; far below the little stream of the Oder foamed over the rocks with a continual roar, and one or two white cloud-wreaths were curling up from the forests.

I followed the water-ditch around every projection of the mountain, still ascending higher amid the same wild scenery, till at length I reached the Oderteich, a great dam, in a kind of valley formed by some mountain peaks on the side of the Brocken. It has a breastwork of granite, very firm, and furnishes a continual supply of water for the works. It began to rain soon, and I took a foot-path which went winding up through the pine wood. The storm still increased, till everything was cloud and rain, so I was obliged to stop about five o'clock at Oderbruch, a toll-house and tavern on the side of the Brocken, on the boundary between Brunswick and Hanover—the second highest inhabited house in the Hartz. The Brocken was invisible through the storm and the weather forboded a difficult ascent. The night was cold, but by a warm fire I let the winds howl and the rain beat. When I awoke the next morning, we were in clouds. They were thick on every side, hiding what little view there was through the openings of the forest. After breakfast, however, they were somewhat thinner, and I concluded to start for the Brocken. It is not the usual way for travellers who ascend, being not only a bad road but difficult to find, as I soon discovered. The clouds gathered around again after I set out, and I was obliged to walk in a storm of mingled rain and snow. The snow lay several feet deep in the forests, and the path was, in many places, quite drifted over. The white cloud-masses were whirled past by the wind, continually enveloping me and shutting out every view. During the winter the path had become, in ninny places, the bed of a mountain torrent, so that I was obliged sometimes to wade kneedeep in snow, and sometimes to walk over the wet, spongy moss, crawling under the long, dripping branches of the stunted pines. After a long time of such dreary travelling, I came to two rocks called the Stag Horns, standing on a little peak. The storm, now all snow, blew more violently than ever, and the path became lost under the deep drifts.

Comforting myself with the assurance that if I could not find it, I could at least make my way back, I began searching, and after some time, came upon it again. Here the forest ceased; the way led on large stones over a marshy ascending plain, but what was above, or on either side, I could not see. It was solitude of the most awful kind. There was nothing but the storm, which had already wet me through, and the bleak gray waste of rocks. It grew sleeper and steeper; I could barely trace the path by the rocks which were worn, and the snow threatened soon to cover these. Added to this, although the walking and fresh mountain air had removed my illness, I was still weak from the effects of it, and the consequences of a much longer exposure to the storm were greatly to be feared. I was wondering if the wind increased at the same rate, how much longer it would be before I should be carried off, when suddenly something loomed up above me through the storm. A few steps more and I stood beside the Brocken House, on the very summit of the mountain! The mariner, who has been floating for days on a wreck at sea, could scarcely be more rejoiced at a friendly sail, than I was on entering the low building. Two large Alpine dogs in the passage, as I walked in, dripping with wet, gave notice to the inmates, and I was soon ushered into a warm room, where I changed my soaked garments for dry ones, and sat down by the fire with feelings of comfort not easily imagined. The old landlord was quite surprised, on hearing the path by which I came, that I found the way at all. The summit was wrapped in the thickest cloud, and he gave me no hope for several hours of any prospect at all, so I sat down and looked over the Stranger's Album.

I saw but two names from the United States—B.F. Atkins, of Boston, and C.A. Hay, from York, Pa. There were a great many long-winded German poems—among them, one by Schelling, the philosopher. Some of them spoke of having seen the "Spectre of the Brocken." I inquired of the landlord about the phenomenon; he says in winter it is frequently seen, in summer more seldom. The cause is very simple. It is always seen at sunrise, when the eastern side of the Brocken is free from clouds, and at the same time, the mist rises from the valley on the opposite side. The shadow of every thing on the Brocken is then thrown in grand proportions upon the mist, and is seen surrounded with a luminous halo. It is somewhat singular that such a spectacle can be seen upon the Brocken alone, but this is probably accounted for by the formation of the mountain, which collects the mist at just such a distance from the summit as to render the shadow visible.

Soon after dinner the storm subsided and the clouds separated a little. I could see down through the rifts on the plains of Brunswick, and sometimes, when they opened a little more, the mountains below us to the east and the adjoining plains, as far as Magdeburg. It was like looking on the earth from another planet, or from some point in the air which had no connection, with it; our station was completely surrounded by clouds, rolling in great masses around us, now and then giving glimpses through their openings of the blue plains, dotted with cities and villages, far below. At one time when they were tolerably well separated, I ascended the tower, fifty feet high, standing near the Brocken House. The view on three sides was quite clear, and I can easily imagine what a magnificent prospect it must be in fine weather. The Brocken is only about four thousand feet high, nearly the same as the loftiest peak of the Catskill, but being the highest mountain in Northern Germany, it commands a more extensive prospect. Imagine a circle described with a radius of a hundred miles, comprising thirty cities, two or three hundred villages and one whole mountain district! We could see Brunswick and Magdeburg, and beyond them the great plain which extends to the North Sea in one direction and to Berlin in the other, while directly below us lay the dark mountains of the Hartz, with little villages in their sequestered valleys. It was but a few moments I could look on this scene—in an instant the clouds swept together again and completely hid it. In accordance with a custom of the mountain, one of the girls made me a "Brocken nosegay," of heather, lichens and moss. I gave her a few pfennings and stowed it away carefully in a corner of my knapsack.

I now began descending the east side, by a good road over fields of bare rock and through large forests of pine. Two or three bare brown peaks rose opposite with an air of the wildest sublimity, and in many places through the forest towered lofty crags. This is the way by which Goethe brings Faust up the Brocken, and the scenery is graphically described in that part of the poem. At the foot of the mountain is the little village of Schiercke, the highest in the Hartz. Here I took a narrow path through the woods, and after following a tediously long road over the hills, reached Elbingerode, where I spent the night, and left the next morning for Blankenburg. I happened to take the wrong road, however, and went through Rubeland, a little village in the valley of the Bode. There are many iron works here, and two celebrated caves, called "Baumann's Höhle," and "Biel's Höhle." I kept on through the gray, rocky hills to Huttenrode, where I inquired the way to the Rosstrappe, but was directed wrong, and after walking nearly two hours in a heavy rain, arrived at Ludwigshütte, on the Bode, in one of the wildest and loneliest corners of the Hartz. I dried my wet clothes at a little inn, ate a dinner of bread and milk, and learning that I was just as far from the Rosstrappe as ever, and that the way was impossible to find alone, I hunted up a guide.

We went over the mountains through a fine old forest, for about two hours, and came out on the brow of a hill near the end of the Hartz, with a beautiful view of the country below and around. Passing the little inn, the path led through thick bushes along the summit, over a narrow ledge of rocks that seemed to stretch out into the air, for on either side the foot of the precipice vanished in the depth below.