As we proceeded through the narrow ravine, the rocks rose perpendicularly on each hand, and shut us in as with walls, but not walls as at Via Mala, abrupt and bare. The precipices are broken into a thousand fantastic shapes, and formed into rough columns, pillars, and peaks numberless; with huge caverns, mighty portals, and towering archways; the whole clothed with pines, verdant with a luxuriant growth of various shrubs; and, but that for the most part the long drought has silenced them, resonant with waterfalls. The stream that makes its way in the depth has thus lost all energy and variety—it ripples murmuring in its rocky channel. The path, ascending and descending over the rocks, winds at its side. Sometimes the fissure nearly meets overhead, and the sun can never shine on the stream below. There is a charm of novelty in the scene quite inexpressible. We penetrate Nature’s secret chambers, which she has adorned with the wildest caprice. Various ravines branch off from the main one, and become numerous and intricate, varied by huge caverns of strange shapes; some open to the sky, some dark and deep; there are little verdant spots in the midst, too, where the turf was green and velvetty, and invited us to rest. We were taken to the particular spots selected as most remarkable for the formation or grandeur of the rocks, or where cascades, reduced unhappily to a thread of water, were accustomed to scatter their spray abroad. The whole way, I must tell you, was one continued ascent, and this explains the wondrous view we gain when we emerge again into outer air.
At length we left the ravine, and entered a forest of firs. After traversing this we found ourselves, as if by magic, at a high elevation, and stood upon the Bastei or Bastion. This is a vast mass of rock, that rises 800 feet above the Elbe, in the depths and centre of which the rent was made which we had thridded. The uttermost edge projects far beyond the face of the precipice, and here we stood looking on a scene so utterly different from every other, that it is difficult to describe it. A caprice of nature is the name usually bestowed on this district; while geologists explain how the action of water on a peculiar species of rock has caused the appearance before us. It is still the same, though on a gigantic and sublime scale. The earth has been broken, and fissured, and worn away. The Elbe sweeps majestically at the foot of the Bastei; a plain is spread beneath, closed in by an amphitheatre of huge columnar hills, which do not, as is usually the case, begin with gradual upland, but rise at once in shape fantastic,—isolated one from the other. Some of the highest and most abrupt have been used as fortresses. The sides of the precipices of the Bastei are clothed in a forest of firs and other wood.[[11]] The whole scene was bathed in dazzling sunshine. The heat was so great, that it was painful to stand on the giddy verge, which is protected by wooden rails (for the whole district is prepared for show); yet it was almost impossible to tear oneself away.
There is an inn at the Bastei, where we dined. German cooking is very bad, and we had to wait long, and were served slowly. A young Englishman dined at the same table. In a classification of travellers, what name is to be given to those who travel only for the sake of saying that they have travelled? He was doing his Saxon Switzerland; he had done his Italy, his Sicily; he had done his sunrise on Mount Etna; and when he should have done his Germany, he would return to England to show how destitute a traveller may be of all impression and knowledge, when they are unable to knit themselves in soul to nature, nor are capacitated by talents or acquirements to gain knowledge from what they see. We must become a part of the scenes around us, and they must mingle and become a portion of us, or we see without seeing and study without learning. There is no good, no knowledge, unless we can go out from, and take some of the external into, ourselves: this is the secret of mathematics as well as of poetry.
We indulged, as well we might, in gazing delightedly from this battlement of nature on the magnificent scene around; and then we turned to the prosaic part of travelling, the necessity of getting on. Our driver (provided by the master voiturier who was to take us to Prague) had been told to meet us at the Bastei; he pretended that this was impossible; that no carriage ever came up, and we must walk some three or four miles to join him. We found all this to be utterly false, and that the usual custom was for the carriages to come up to the Bastei. With a burning sun above, and a good deal of labour before us, we were not willing to encounter any unnecessary fatigue: so we sent a man to order the carriage to come to us. It came; but the kutscher refused to take us unless we paid him something extra. This was an obvious piece of rascality, and we begged our friend, who was absolute master of German, to remonstrate with him. But he had, during his long stay in this country, acquired too much laisser-aller for our impatient English natures. Nothing can equal the slow style in which a German makes a bargain, or discusses a disputed point. He never thinks that he can argue with any success, unless he puts one hand on the other’s shoulder, and brings his face close to him. Indeed, this habit of coming so very near in conversation is, as far as I remarked, usual in Germany. I have often edged off till I got into a corner, and then there was no help but, if possible, to run away. To return to our kutscher. With ignorant and deaf ears we saw him and our friend argue and re-argue the point while time flew. Our instructions were, to leave the Bastei at three at latest; it was now long past four. Why not yield to the demand? I believe travellers alone know the swelling indignation and obstinate resistance with which, at the worst of times, they meet extortion. We would not yield; and finding our friend still vainly discussing, another among us took our books and cloaks from the carriage, and, pumping up the only German words he could command, said to the fellow:—“Kannen sie nach Dresden gehen.” If he had been master, he might have taken us at our word; but he knew we should meet his master at Arbesau, so he took fright and consented, without extra pay, to take us to Schandau. He had been engaged to take us some four miles beyond; but we (foolishly enough) consented to be satisfied with being driven so far.
Descending from the Bastei, the road wound round hills, with a stream on the other hand. Schandau is thus placed, and it is a very pretty country inn; the stream in front, with a bridge, and before a garden, secluded and peaceful, reminded one of the inn at Burford Bridge, near Boxhill. It would have been as well to remain here could we have given three instead of two days to our excursion. But this was impossible; and we were anxious, as evening was advancing, to get on. We asked if we could have a calèche to take us to the foot of the Kuhstall, which is the last point where a carriage is serviceable; the rest of the excursion must be performed on foot, in chairs, or on mules.
Our instructions bid us leave Schandau by five at latest; it was now nearly six: so we begged them to hasten with the carriage. Fair promises were given, and we loitered away half an hour in the garden of the inn, and then we grew impatient. After a time it became apparent that the people were playing the very usual trick of delaying bringing a carriage, till too late, so to force us to sleep at their inn. We were rather slow at arriving at this conviction, and not the less resolute to resist the imposition; indeed, yielding would put us to great inconvenience. After answering our expostulations for some time with false promises, they at last impudently declared that we could not have a carriage. Our only resource was the fellow who brought us from Dresden, and who by compact ought at once to have taken us to the place whither we wished to go. Two thalers bribed him, and he agreed to proceed. We asked for a guide, and engaged him; but, at setting off from Schandau, he said it was impossible for a lady to reach the Grosse Winterberg that night, and he refused to go.
On the whole, with evening closing in, the guide deserting, and several miles before us, to sleep at Schandau seemed our best resource; but we would not; the cool evening air was pleasant. I did not object to a little adventure. We should, it is true, miss some points usually visited, but we should gain a great object with the tourist—that of viewing the Grosse Winterberg by moonlight and at sunrise;—we went on, therefore, the road winding at the base of wooded hills, till we reached the foot of the Kuhstall. The mules were all gone, and so were the guides. A countryman who was doing work at the inn of the Grosse Winterberg, offered to show us the way thither, and leaving the carriage, and loading the man with books and carpet-bag, we set out.
We had been obliged to give up the idea of viewing Kuhstall and the Kleine Winterberg, and aimed only at reaching the Grosse, which is situated at the top of a very high hill. It was now past eight o’clock, and evening had closed in. The hill we climbed was clothed with pines, and it was impossible to conceive a more fatiguing ascent. The soil was sand, into which we sank to our ankles, as we toiled up. No breath of air stirred the trees. After the first chill which followed sunset, the night became excessively warm; shut in as we were by trees, we were oppressed by heat and toil. To add to our troubles, it soon grew pitch-dark—not a star-beam penetrated the trees—our guide went on before, and we provided him with a cigar, the light of which alone showed us where he was; and now and then my companions struck sparks from a flint to throw transient radiance on the path, which bordered (I believe, but we could see nothing) a steep precipice on one hand; on the other, we had the broken surface of the mountain, and the boughs of the pines overhead. The way seemed endless—but as we had conquered the people at Schandau, and got our own way, we would not be dispirited—and laughed at our difficulties—and toiled up the steep, plunging as we went deep into the sand. At last we reached the top of the hill, and another half hour brought us to the inn. It was eleven o’clock—so you may imagine that the way had been long, and that we were not a little fatigued.
Late as it was, we determined to reward ourselves with a little amusement. Supper was ordered—and we ordered also three Bohemian girls with their harps. Here, as in Wales, harps form a part of the entertainment given to travellers at the inns; but in Bohemia, they are played by girls instead of men. The harpists were gone, it was so late; but at our call they came, and played and sang several wild national airs. We were now on the frontiers of Bohemia, whence the race of Gipsies was said in old times to have emigrated. I do not know whether there was any Gipsy blood in these girls—their eyes had not the peculiar cast of the race. One of the three was very handsome, and looked proud—as indeed she was—and listened with an air of haughty disdain to every compliment. They had on their faces, that which too often rests on the countenances of the lower order of Germans—an expression of sullenness. I soon grew too tired to listen, and left them playing. The waning moon rose over the sea of hills on which I looked from my window; I was almost too fatigued to see. At sunrise I started up to gaze;—the glory of awakening day was on the mountain tops, which looked more like a stormy ocean than a scene of earth. I scarcely know what I saw; my eyes were drooping with sleep; I knew my companions would not rise, so I went again to bed, and when I awoke, it seemed as if I had dreamed of a glorious sunrise in fairy-land. I looked from the tiny casement of my room—we were on the highest of many hundred hills, nearly two thousand feet above the level of the sea, and commanded a wide horizon, inclosing a district strangely convulsed, wildly heaped up with mountains and rocks of various and fantastic shapes, clothed with wood.
Murray speaks of the inn at the Grosse Winterberg as two or three separate huts, where sorry accommodation may be obtained. This state of things is reformed. On the highest pinnacle of the mountain is a very good country inn, such as may remind the traveller of those found in North Wales. The host was very civil, and we had to put his civility to the test. I had put a quantity of thaler notes in my writing-desk, and this had gone with our luggage; by a miscalculation, I had not brought enough of the dirty paper for our exclusion, and the less that I had expected to pay for our carriage at Prague. But the fellow who drove us insisted on the money, twelve thalers, before he left us at Schandau; two more we had to give him to take us to the foot of the hill of the Grosse Winterberg; and this had entirely drained us. The master of the inn readily agreed to pass us on to the host at Tätchen, who again would trust us till we reached Arbesau, and were possessed of our dear thalers. It is impossible to express the sense of littleness that comes over one when, in travelling, one has no money at all. Gulliver, in the palm of the hand of the Brobdignagian reaper, could not have felt smaller, till we received our host’s ready consent to trust us.