"There is no 'Maid of Bregenz,'" she said angrily at last. Adding, after a pause, during which she looked us up and down as though to decide upon our nationality, "But mad English people have asked me hundreds of times about her. I know nothing. There is no more to be said."

And with this she returned to her perusal of the paper she had been reading when we accosted her, and we had to be content.

We made our way down the somewhat rugged and steep road to the lower town a little crestfallen, although the view of the lake in the late afternoon sunshine of a July day was exquisite beyond description, the water deep blue and green in patches, with the incoming and outgoing boats and steamers leaving frothy-white or rippling wakes behind them almost as long as they themselves remained in sight. One determination we came to. It was in future not to inquire too closely into such pretty and poetical stories as that of the "Maid of Bregenz," and not to allow our desire for legendary or antiquarian knowledge to permit us to run the risk of further disillusionment.[28]

We did not find the effigy of "the maid and her milk-white steed," on which she had ridden over the Swiss frontier and swum across the Rhine to warn the inhabitants of her old home of a projected attack by the Swiss amongst whom she had gone to dwell in service. The genial proprietor of the Oesterreichischer Hof, we found, had heard of "the Maid." Alas! not from his fellow-townsfolk (who should have cherished her memory), but, like the old lady in the upper town, from English tourists, who had, doubtless, climbed the steep ascent on a similar errand of inquiry and research to our own.

"Maid" or no maid, however, Bregenz is delightful, and well deserves the title of "pearl of the Vorarlberg" which has been bestowed upon it. In its quaint old streets, its Capuchin Convent, which is so prominent a feature, standing as it does upon a wooded knoll of the Gebhardsberg, and its fine church, to the south on another eminence, with an ancient and weather-worn tower, there is plenty of interest. Picturesque the place most certainly is, and the effect is greatly heightened by the near presence of the lake, which stretches away in front of the town to fair Constance in the far distance.

FAREWELL, TYROL

In leaving Tyrol by way of beautiful Bregenz, washed as it is by the waters of one of the most delightful of Swiss lakes, one carries with one a last impression which is fragrant with the memories of a hospitable race, charming scenery, and innumerable things of historic, artistic, and antiquarian interest. There is, indeed, no other gate through which one would rather leave this "Land within the Mountains," which, as yet unspoiled by crowds of tourists and general sophistication and the deterioration which arises therefrom, lures one to return to it again and again.

INDEX