CHARCOAL BURNERS IN THE BLACK FOREST.
A party of Americans playing cards in the castle of a warlike king! Well! well! There are steamboats on Loch Katrine; there will be a railroad to Jerusalem, and the holy places will yet be illuminated with the electric light. There is no room to-day for sentiment.
This castle was built, originally, by the Romans, and fell into the hands of the Margrave of Baden in 1112. It was necessary in that day to have these strongholds, from which the margraves could issue and make war upon their neighbors, that being their principal business. It was continued as a residence for the Baden potentates till 1689, when Louis XV. of France demolished it, leaving it, less the ivy that has grown over it, as it is to-day.
Its principal use now is to give employment to the donkeys to get to it, and the selling of wine and refreshments to the tourists who hunger after the delightful view it affords.
The new Friedrichsbad is an imposing edifice built against the hillside upon which the springs are located. The exterior is a fine specimen of the Renaissance style of architecture, and is embellished with a great many fine statues, busts and medallions.
The interior is a marvel of completeness and elegance, being finer in all its details than any similar bathing establishment in the world. The wood work is all massive and elegant; the walls and ceilings are artistically frescoed; the bath tubs, large swimming baths, are cut out of solid marble, and are so arranged that the bather can go from one to another, securing any desired temperature without inconvenience.
The water comes from springs on the hillsides, at a temperature of 144° Fahrenheit, and is conveyed by pipes throughout the building, the pipes being so arranged that the water is gradually cooled. In this way one is enabled to bathe in any kind of water he desires. The yield is upwards of one hundred gallons a minute, and are said to be among the most efficacious mineral springs known, the solid ingredients, chiefly chloride of sodium, amounting only to three per cent.
BATHS IN BADEN.
In this magnificent structure, there are the common bath tubs, hewn out of solid blocks of marble and completely let into the floor, with steps leading down to them; large hip baths, supplied with a continual stream of mineral water; an electric bathroom for inhaling the thermal water; baths for the cold water treatment and the cold shower baths; vapor baths, hot air baths, swimming baths of different degrees of temperature, supplied also with shower baths the temperature of whose water can be regulated by the bather, and vapor baths in boxes.
After taking as many of these as he desires, and having been rubbed in a room lurid with hot air, the bather is conducted to a large room where he is enveloped in a warm bath cloak. Then he is taken to a large, luxuriously furnished room where he lies down for half or three-quarters of an hour.