We had hardly entered the inn when we were visited by a heavy thunderstorm, accompanied by tremendous hail.
20th. Wishing to see something of the town, I took a hasty stroll, early in the morning before we started, through the streets, but found little worth seeing. The cathedral is, externally, a fine old Gothic building, and the principal street is respectable. I was much struck with the head-dress of the women, which seems to vary according to their rank. The peasant girls wear large fur caps, whilst the women of a rather higher class have upon their heads most extraordinary gauze or muslin appendages, in all sorts of shapes, some like helmets, some pointed, and others falling in peaks, but all more or less richly embroidered with gold or silver thread.
On leaving Landshuth we ascended a very long and steep hill, and on arriving at the top we saw the Austrian Alps, at a distance of seventy or eighty miles, bounding the whole horizon with a line of shining white, and here and there broken by a dark shade of grey; whilst some single perfectly white and shining peaks shone high above the floating clouds, whose white colour appeared tarnished when compared with that of the eternal snow. We drove the greater part of the day through pine forests, up hill and down hill; now perfectly losing sight of the Alps, then again from the summit of the next hill catching sight of them, apparently not more than ten miles off, so distinctly could we trace the vallies between the different mountains. We stopped to dine at the post-house at Neumarkt, a small village, where I could get nothing but a pigeon dressed in garlic, and some sausage. Leaving this village, we descended from the mountains, amid which we had been travelling, into the plain which separates them from the Alps, and found ourselves, as it were, in front of this colossal chain, now brightly illuminated by the glowing sun. Towards evening I had hoped to have seen the rosy tinge upon the Alps, caused by the reflection of the sunbeams upon the snow of the summits, but I was disappointed, for they faded away into the grey clouds of evening as we drove up a very steep but short hill into Neu-Ötting, a neat little town, in the streets of which we saw many pretty women and girls knitting before their doors; on the whole, the people are much handsomer here than in the country we have hitherto passed through. About two miles further on we reached Alt-Ötting, where we were very well lodged at the post-house. Our hostess, a young lass of only seventeen or eighteen, spoke very good French, and seemed intelligent and active in the direction of her household.
21st. In the morning, before Sir Humphry was up, I went to see a little church on the Platz or square before our inn. The arcades surrounding it are completely covered with votive pictures, or pictures returning thanks to some favourite saint for having been delivered from great danger; some, for example, for having broken their legs or arms instead of their necks, others that their friends had been killed and not they, and such like. Many of these pictures bear dates of two or three hundred years ago, but they are almost all mere daubs. The interior of the church is also quite covered with paintings, and gold and silver offerings, some of the latter apparently of great value. On my return to the inn, I asked our hostess about this church, and she told me that it had been a celebrated place of pilgrimage for ages past; that the image of the virgin in it bears the date of the twelfth century, and that there also are kept embalmed the hearts of the sovereigns of Bavaria, Charles Theodore, Maximilian Joseph, and others. She also informed me that there was a convent of nuns, and a Capuchin monastery in the town; some of the former I had seen in the church.
On leaving Alt-Ötting, we for the first time this year saw cherry-trees in blossom, and on the sides of the road there was abundance of the pretty blue gentian. The next station, and the last in Bavaria, was Marktl. From thence we drove on to Braunau, already a wide and very rapid river. The black and yellow striped posts on the wooden bridge announced to us the dominion of Austria; and on entering the town, we drove to the custom-house, where, however, the officers gave us no trouble, for a letter from Prince Esterhazy, with which Sir Humphry was furnished, seemed to act as a talisman, producing instantaneous civility, with bows and titles innumerable. The next poste was Altheim, where we found that every thing was to be paid for in Austrian money, which at first promised to be no slight trouble, though we soon found it was an easy matter to reduce it, six Bavarian kreuzers, or six florins, being equal to five Austrian ones. It was our intention to have reached Haag this evening, but having a very long and steep hill to cross, the night overtook us at Ried, a little village, where we were obliged to put up with the accommodations of a miserable inn, with bad coffee and wretched beds, much to the discomfiture of Sir Humphry.
22nd. We left Ried at about nine, and drove through a fine forest of lofty pines to Haag, and from thence to Lambach. Wood seems so abundant in this country, that not only the inferior houses are wholly built of it, but even the fences between the fields are formed of rough deal planks. Lambach is a small insignificant town on the Traun, which river we here saw for the first time: its water is beautifully clear, and of a bluish-green colour. From Lambach we turned off to Vöcklabrück, along the banks of the Agger, another clear mountain stream, winding very prettily through a flat valley of the same name. On our approach to this little place we beheld the lofty Alps, which form the shores of the Traun Lake, at a short distance off; and Sir Humphry rejoiced that he had at length arrived where he might enjoy his favourite amusement of fishing, which, but for a thunderstorm, he would this very evening have indulged in, at the expence of the poor fish in the little river Vöckla.
23rd. Early this morning, Sir Humphry begged me in his name to visit Count E——, who lives at a short distance from Vöcklabrück, and is proprietor of the fishing right in the Agger and Vöckla, and request his permission for him to fish in these streams; this the Count very graciously granted, and Sir Humphry accordingly mounted a pony, and rode down to the Vöckla, where, however, during the morning, he caught but little fish. The afternoon was spent in the same pursuit, and we closed the evening as usual with reading some of Dryden's poems and the "Arabian Nights."
24th. In the morning Sir Humphry begged me to procure a one-horse chaise for him, in which, with his servant, he was driven to the Kammer Lake, about ten miles off. I, in the meanwhile, strolled about the environs, not finding anything interesting in the town; but my walk did not prove very agreeable, the weather being so misty that I could gain no view of the neighbouring Alps, and I was very glad to see Sir Humphry return in the afternoon, bringing with him a few fish, which were dressed for his dinner. In the evening we read Prior's "Alma," but not being pleased with it we soon changed it for Pope's "Essay on Man."
25th. We quitted Vöcklabrück at about ten in the morning, not at all to my sorrow; and after a beautiful drive through fine fir woods and lanes, where the hedges were already quite green, we arrived at Gmünden, and beheld a scene which surpasses in magnificence any thing I have ever yet seen. On one side of the hill down which we drove was a wood of tall beeches, the leaves just bursting from the bud; on the lower side, meadows of the most beautiful green sloped down to the town of Gmünden, which seemed to rise out of the bosom of the lake of the same name, or, as it is more generally called, the Traun Lake. Alps, whose summits were hidden in the clouds, and on whose rocky heights nothing was seen but the dark black pine, form the banks of this large reservoir of water, in some places descending with precipitous and almost perpendicular steepness into the clear lake, whilst in others they are lost in fine meadows and orchards, with neat wooden cottages peeping through the trees; and on an island in the lake we saw a large chateau and church, which are joined to the main land by a long wooden bridge. The best inn at Gmünden, the Ship, is close upon the edge of the water, and commands a magnificent view over the whole extent of the lake, and every window being provided with a little cushion, one may enjoy the scene leaning on the window-sill for hours, without any detriment to one's elbows. Gmünden itself is a pretty clean little town at the north end of the lake, exactly on the spot where it empties itself into the river Traun with an impetuous rush, thus dividing the town into two distinct parts, connected by a strong wooden bridge built on piles. On the shores of the lake are many beautiful small villages, now and then seen through the half green trees, and at about six miles from Gmünden, apparently at the end of the lake, is the town of Traunkirchen, almost lost in distance and haziness. The water of the lake is beautifully clear, and of a deep blue-green colour. After reading to Sir Humphry in the evening, I spent an hour gazing out upon the lake and its alpine shores, partially illuminated by the moon; the more distant snowy summits seemed like detached clouds, resting as it were upon the dark and gloomy masses beneath, which threw their long broad shadows over the silvery bosom of the lake; while every here and there on the surrounding shores, a few twinkling lights, seen between the trees, marked the situation of a village or country house.