CHAPTER XIX.
BERLIN, POTSDAM, AND DRESDEN.
Berlin is built on a plain, and there is nothing in the site to recommend it. Like a drunken man, it is on the Spree, which wanders through the centre of the city, with a branch that forms an island, and a canal that winds around the city, and through the adjacent country, so that the Oder on the east and the Elbe on the west are united. The streets are generally broad, with plenty of squares and other open spaces. The houses are of brick, covered with stucco, upon which the Baltic fogs that prevail here have a bad effect, injuring the appearance of the buildings. The principal street, on which the palaces, museum, and hotels are situated, a very wide avenue, in imitation of the Champs Elysée in Paris, but not at all to be compared with it, is Unter den Linden. The middle of it is a broad gravelled walk, with double rows of lime and other trees to shade it for pedestrians. On each side of this is a narrow roadway for equestrians. Outside of these roads, and separated from them by a fence and a line of trees, are two streets for general use.
The weather was warm and pleasant, and Dr. Winstock proposed a ride through Unter den Linden, which is about a mile in length, terminating in the palace at one end, and the Brandenburg Gate at the other. Two droschkes—four-wheeled carriages, with one or two seats, similar to the voitures de place of Paris—were procured. Lincoln and Miss Gurney, with the doctor, occupied one of them. The great avenue was full of people, and the scene was very lively. The party drove towards the palace first, near which the hotel is located. In a moment the doctor stopped the carriage at the colossal statue of Frederick the Great, one of the most magnificent monuments in Europe. The Statue itself is seventeen feet high, resting on a granite pedestal twenty-five feet high, on the sides of which are bronze figures in high relief, life size, of thirty-one persons, including the heroes of the Seven Years' War, and the eminent men of the great monarch's reign.
"The king lives in that house," said Dr. Winstock, pointing to a very plain edifice nearly opposite the statue. "He may often be seen sitting at the corner window. There is the queen now, at the second story window."
Of course this was a genuine sensation, and the party gazed at her majesty, who stood before the window. She wore a white dress, and though she was nearly sixty, she looked much younger.
"Is that the queen?" asked Lincoln.
"That is Queen Augusta," replied the surgeon.
"She don't look like a queen."