Passing out of Cochem, as we continue on our flowery path, we find ourselves in the shade of the Kreuzberg mountain: it is covered with vineyards, which produce a small quantity of excellent wine.
The next town is Clotten; between it and Cochem a fine range of rocky precipices form an amphitheatre, that dwarfs even the gigantic works of the old Romans. What ants we appear when from a rock we look down on our human mole-hills!
The church at Clotten is remarkably well placed on an eminence, where its handsome proportions are seen to the greatest effect. The town is very dilapidated and irregularly built: there are some very picturesque houses in it still, but the old walls and gate-towers have nearly all disappeared to make room for the vines.
Clotten Castle.
At a little distance from the town is the ruined tower, that alone survives of the former castle of Clotten; it is partially undermined, and a great hole broken into its centre. The castle of Clotten was extensive, and very strong; at one time it was the residence of a queen, Richenza of Poland. She was the wife of Miceslaus II., and during her husband’s lifetime she managed all the affairs of the kingdom: at his death she was made Regent during her young son’s minority, but the Poles drove her out of their kingdom, and she took refuge with her son Casimir in Clotten: here she shut herself up, and Casimir became a monk. Some years after, a deputation from Poland waited on Casimir, and begged him to return to Poland as king; this he did, the Pope releasing him from his vows on the whimsical condition that all the Poles of good birth should cut their hair close to the point of the ear, in perpetual recollection of their king having been a monk.
Richenza endeavoured to persuade her son not to accept the throne, but her arguments did not convince him of the vanity of royalty; she remained in this country, constantly residing at Clotten Castle, near which she built a hermitage with a chapel, to which she often retired.
A fine reach of the river is seen from the ruin, and behind it is a deep valley, in which one or two mills are just perceptible through the trees that envelope the course of the brook which turns their great wheels.
The spires of the churches are in general finely pointed, the one at our feet, as we stand here, is a fair example of their style of architecture. On Sundays and fête-days they are crowded; often they are so full, that late-comers are obliged to stand in the doorway or outside: the crowd is made up of both men and women; the head-dresses of the latter are gay and graceful. The embroidered cloth or velvet covering the thick plaits of the unmarried girls, the close caps of the old women, and the smart streaming ribbons of the young wives, make the heads of the crowd like a bed of tulips.