Shatzlar is a large straggling burgh, destitute of manufactures, and apparently little visited by travellers; though the inn, which is kept by the burgomaster, can boast of very tolerable accommodations, and a host and hostess both well disposed to fall in with their guests' wishes. There is a schloss hard by, inhabited by certain officials, who, however, exercise no jurisdiction over the town; and a church, not remarkable for anything, except the good order of its charnel-house. This, a small building separated by the breadth of the churchyard from the main edifice, seems to be a place of deposit for all the skulls and other bones which may be thrown up in digging the graves; and they are arranged round the walls with as much taste as their ghastly character will allow.
We felt so tired, and our feet were suffering so much from blisters, that we resolved to give ourselves a day of total rest in Shatzlar; and in spite of the ennui attendant on such an arrangement, we adhered to it with laudable pertinacity. Rising at seven, and breakfasting at eight in the morning, we whiled away the time till dinner by strolling up the side of the hill, along which the town is built, and enjoying the exquisite panorama which, from various points, it opened out upon us. We visited likewise the fountain of the Bober, a well deep in the forest, and drank of its waters ere yet they had become polluted by flowing among the habitations of men. Our guide, the burgomaster's son, conducted us likewise to a corner of the wood which is set apart for bird-catching, and where every tree is armed with one or more gins, skilfully made of horse-hair and attached to the bark. The pencil also was appealed to, but in vain. This was too extensive, as well as too glorious a scene, to be copied by one so little skilled in the art as myself; so, after spoiling two or three leaves in my journal book, I desisted from the attempt; and we descended to the inn, where the smell of calf's-flesh in preparation warned us that the hour of dinner was not far distant. It came in due course, and the meal was discussed effectually; after which the burgomaster favoured us with his company, though he steadily refused to partake of the excellent wine which his own cellar produced. He was a man of some intelligence, and had an ambition to see his children rise upwards on the hill of life. Accordingly one of his sons, a delicate youth, is preparing himself for holy orders; another is studying medicine at the university of Vienna; and the third, the lad who accompanied us in our morning's ramble, had served his time with a cotton manufacturer. But the confinement not agreeing with his delicate constitution, the burgomaster had brought him home; and he now officiates as a sort of waiter in the hotel, with the understanding that at his father's decease, or perhaps before it, he shall succeed to the hotel itself.
In listening to such details one hour was spent. Another passed away in watching from the window such objects as this most quiet of quiet Bohemian burghs might produce. And of these there was one which, being associated with the memory of other days, interested me not a little. There is a fountain in the middle of the market-place, into which one stream of fresh water is continually flowing, while another drains off from it. Hither the women bring their clothes to be washed; not in the fountain itself, but in their own tubs, which they range round it; and the proceedings of one of these industrious damsels amused me much. She filled her tub to the brim, and then kilting her petticoats, set to work tramping with might and main, precisely as, in years long gone by, I have seen a Scotch girl do, on the Back-walk at Stirling, or the Calton Hill in Edinburgh. What a strange thing is association, and how easily is it called into play by the veriest trifles. The woman's legs had nothing to boast of in the way of symmetry, but I confess that I watched them, in their alternate rise and fall, with a degree of interest such as I have not for many a day bestowed on any other pair of understandings, whether male or female.
The legs at length disappeared, for the curtain of the petticoats was dropped, and with it fell all the bright and glowing visions of boyhood, in which I had been indulging. I felt once more that I was neither in life's prime, nor a denizen of "bonny Scotland;" so I listened to certain suggestions which my young companion had for some time been making, and agreed to accompany him a little way down the course of the Bober, while he tried to fish. We went accordingly, but to no purpose. The Bober does not become a trout-stream till long after it has lost sight of the source from whence it springs, and we had our walk, with the conversation of the young burgomaster and a friend of his, a learned baker in the village, as our reward. The historical researches of the latter gentleman had been very extensive, and he possessed a laudable zeal to make this known. He was very curious to know whether Lord Cromwell were yet alive, or the king of England's head put on again. I did my best to satisfy him on these interesting topics; but I doubt whether I succeeded; for on my assuring him that there was no Lord Cromwell, and that the head of William IV. had never been cut off, he eyed me with a glance of peculiar distrust.
Thus passed a day at Shatzlar,—heavily enough, it must be allowed; for, ardent as my admiration of Wordsworth's poetry is, I confess that I have not succeeded in imbibing so much of his philosophy as to feel as he would doubtless have felt in a similar situation. Both mine and my companion's overwrought limbs, however, derived no slight advantage from the halt, and well it was that they did so, for the task which awaited them on the morrow was a hard one. After repeated consultations with the burgomaster, which ended invariably, on his part, with an entreaty that we would not think of an enterprise so Quixotic as crossing Schnee-Koppee at this early season, and without a guide, we made up our minds to go in direct opposition to his counsels, and after gaining the summit, to descend by the other side, and sleep at Schmiedeberg, or some other town in Prussian Silesia. Just, albeit sharp and cutting, is the aphorism of Madame de Staël, that there is no country in the world where the expression, "It is impossible," comes so frequently into use as in Germany. Propose to a German any undertaking which he has either never tried, or which might break through his every-day habits, and he will assure you that the thing is not to be accomplished. Urge him to increased exertions, or accelerated speed, and he will tell you that to do more, or move faster, is impracticable. And as to learning any new method of performing a given task, be it even the dressing of a dish for dinner, I question whether you could prevail upon him to attempt that by any influence short of positive compulsion. Yet in war the Germans are an enterprising people, and among the arts of peace they can boast, with truth, that some of the most important discoveries ever effected were effected by their countrymen. How strange that their domestic habits should be so thoroughly in contradiction to such qualities as enterprise in war and ingenuity in the application of mechanics.
Of this strange predilection to create difficulties for themselves and others, which, beyond all doubt, attaches to the German character, we were well aware; and took, in consequence, the burgomaster's cautions at little more than they proved, in effect, to be worth. Some obstacles, with a good deal of fatigue, we made up our minds to encounter; but, as the Duke of Wellington said in his speech to the cadets at Addiscombe,—a speech which I had the good fortune to hear, and am not likely soon to forget,—nothing great was ever accomplished without labour; and labour we were content to bestow, and fatigue to endure, even in the ascent of Schnee-Koppee. Accordingly at six in the morning, and carrying the heir of the hotel along with us, to point out the direct path through a forest, which it was necessary to thread, we sallied forth; and by seven were once more left to our own guidance, with the steep but grassy side of one of the ramifications of the mountain under our feet.
I shall never forget, to my dying day, the effect produced upon me by the first half of this ascent. The day was as bright and beautiful as ever shone out of heaven. Hot it was, but not intensely so, for the sun's power was yet trivial; and as the winds were hushed, except when from time to time a light breeze rustled among the foliage of the pine-woods, the stillness that prevailed around struck me as something quite sublime. In proportion as we rose, likewise, above the level of the valley, every sight and sound appeared to acquire a new charm. Beneath were wreaths of mist, rolling themselves slowly up the sides of the opposite mountains. Under their canopy villages and hamlets were reposing, from the chimneys of which long thin streaks of smoke curled upwards as if to join the cloud; while here and there a solitary cottage, a chapel, and even a gilt crucifix, gleamed to peculiar advantage from its own quiet nook. I have spoken of the silence as being quite sublime. Not that it was unbroken; for up the mountain's side came, by fits and starts, the tinkling of the bells, which in this country are suspended to the necks of the cattle when they are feeding; intermixed with an occasional whoop, or snatch of a song, or merry whistle from the cow-herd; while the branches over-head,—for we sat down in the skirts of a low pine wood,—were crowded with little birds, whose sweet but not loud notes completed one of the most exquisite concerts to which, in any part of the world, I have ever listened. And then the landscape,—what a picture was there. Bold conical hills, swelling one over another like waves of the sea, overtopped and looked down upon a succession of valleys, each more striking, both for richness and beauty, than the first; and forming altogether such a scene as must be witnessed to be felt, or even understood.
We could not spare much time to repose, even in such a situation as this; so we quitted our lairs, not without regret, and plodded onwards. The whole day's journey was, as may be imagined, interesting in the extreme. Before us was the peak of Schnee-Koppee, sharp, to all appearance, as the apex of a bee-hive, yet supporting a round tower, which we understood the burgomaster to have described as a chapel. Round this peak large fields of snow were lying, but the summit itself seemed clear. This pleased us exceedingly; indeed, every step which we took in advance helped to dispel a portion of the gloom in which our host had endeavoured to envelope the enterprise; for though there was no path, points of observation could everywhere be taken; and the woods, of the depths and horrors of which he had spoken so much, all proved easy of passage. On, therefore, we tramped, nothing doubting, till, after repeated dips and renewed ascents, each of which opened out to us fresh glories, some of them almost, but not quite equal, to those that lay behind, we arrived, about twelve o'clock, at the village of Kleine Oupa; the most elevated of all the spots on which, in this country of Bohemia, men have ventured to establish their permanent dwellings; and raised, I should conceive, little, if at all, short of four thousand feet above the level of the sea. For round them, in patches, among the stunted firs, the snow was still lying; even while the sun beat warmly overhead, and thin crops of rye,—the only grain fit to be cultivated at such a height from the plain,—seemed advancing to perfection.
Kleine Oupa is rather a hamlet than a village. It contains, perhaps, thirty houses, of which one is a parsonage,—for there is a church,—one a school-house, one a caserne, in which a party of jagers are quartered, and one which fulfils the two-fold duty of mill and gasthof. To this latter we bent our steps, and found in its tap-room rather better than the customary fare, that is to say, good white bread, as well as eggs and butter. These furnished forth, for hungry travellers like us, an excellent dinner; at the completion of which our journey recommenced, not to be delayed again, except for a brief space, at remote intervals, till we had accomplished the avowed object of our excursion.
Nobody can have climbed a mountain so high as even the loftiest in the highlands of Scotland, without observing the effect upon vegetation of the increasing severity of the climate as you approach the top. The last forest, worthy of the name, through which we passed this day, overhung Kleine Oupa; and even the remoter portions of it were stunted and unhealthy. Next came the ascent of what is called Swartzen-Koppee; that is, of a long black table-land, overtopping, by a considerable altitude, the rest of the mountains near, but still far beneath the level of Schnee-Koppee. Here vegetation entirely ceased. First, there were some straggling firs, the uppermost branches of which reached to my middle. Then there was heath in abundance, out of which we scared an enormous black cock; and finally, there was the bare brown rock, unclothed even with moss, and lying about in fragments, as if a thousand sledge-hammers had been employed for a century, in the vain endeavour to flatten or beat down the mountain. Here, then, we paused to look round, and had the day been propitious, we should have probably obtained as fine a view as from the peak of Schnee-Koppee himself. But, as almost always happens when you have travelled far to ascend a mountain, the atmosphere had become thick and foggy; so that our vision was bounded by limits far more narrow than we had flattered ourselves with finding. Still the panorama was very fine, and we enjoyed it much; after which, having Schnee-Koppee himself before us, we pushed on.