Still following in the footsteps of the Crusaders we finally, after the most delightful of drives, arrived at the old city of Tarsus, the birthplace of St. Paul the Apostle. This was the first city in which Baldwin and Bohemond and the Tancred the Brave flew their colors after crossing the Taurus. We had followed in their footsteps a great part of the way from the legend-wrapped Bosphorus to the romantic Cydnus—the Cydnus in which Alexander so imprudently bathed, where Cleopatra met Anthony and where legend long had it that Barbarossa lost his life. But the truth of history bids us declare that this great German hero—in whose footsteps we had so closely followed from his embarkation on the far-off Danube—perished not in the waters of the Cydnus but in those of the Calycadnus, several score miles to the northwest of the more famed Cilician stream. It was then in the Calycadnus—the modern Gieuk Gu—that “perished the noblest type of German kingship, the Kaiser Redbeard, of whom history and legend have so much to tell.” The spot where he met his fate was fabled to have been indicated long ages before by a rock near the river’s source, which was said to bear the portentous words Hic hominum maximus peribit—here shall perish the greatest of men.
But although history had declared that the heroic Römischer Kaiser was no more, his admiring subjects knew better. Like Charlemagne, Desmond of Kilmallock, Sebastian I of Brazil, Napoleon Bonaparte, and other worthies,[197] he still lives, but has retired into strict seclusion till, in the fulness of time, “he shall come again full twice as fair and rule over his people.” According to one legend the monarch is fast asleep in the castle of Bordenstein, or in the vaults of the old palace of Kaiserslautern. But according to another legend, he is held by enchanted slumber under the Kyffhauser mountain. All, however, agree that he sits
Taciturn, sombre, sedate and grave,
before a stone table “through which his fiery-red beard has grown nearly to the floor, or around which it has coiled itself nearly three times.” Here, like King Arthur, of whom it is written, “Arturus rex quondam rexque futurus,” he rests until
In some dark day when Germany
Hath need of warriors such as he,
A voice to tell of her distress
Shall pierce the mountain’s deep recess—
Shall ring through the dim vaults and scare
The spectral ravens round his chair,