Rudolph Erich Raspe was a German author who was also an Archæologist of note.
His best known work is the celebrated History of Baron Münchausen.
A HORSE TIED TO A STEEPLE
I set off from Rome on a journey to Russia, in the midst of winter, from a just notion that frost and snow must of course improve the roads, which every traveler had described as uncommonly bad through the northern parts of Germany, Poland, Courland, and Livonia. I went on horseback, as the most convenient manner of traveling. I was but lightly clothed, and of this I felt the inconvenience the more I advanced northeast. What must not a poor old man have suffered in that severe weather and climate, whom I saw on a bleak common in Poland, lying on the road, helpless, shivering, and hardly having wherewithal to cover his nakedness? I pitied the poor soul. Though I felt the severity of the atmosphere myself, I threw my mantle over him, and immediately I heard a voice from the heavens, blessing me for that piece of charity, saying:
“You will be rewarded, my son, for this in time.”
I went on. Night and darkness overtook me. No village was to be seen. The country was covered with snow, and I was unacquainted with the road.
Tired out, I alighted, and fastened my horse to something like the pointed stump of a tree which appeared above the snow. For the sake of safety I placed my pistols under my arm, and laid down on the snow, where I slept so soundly that I did not open my eyes till full daylight. It is not easy to conceive my astonishment at finding myself in the midst of a village, lying in a churchyard. Nor was my horse to be seen; but I heard him soon after neigh somewhere above me. On looking upward, I beheld him hanging by his bridle to the weathercock of the steeple. Matters were now quite plain to me. The village had been covered with snow overnight; a sudden change in the weather had taken place; I had sunk down to the churchyard while asleep at the same rate as the snow had melted away; and what in the dark I had taken to be a stump of a little tree appearing above the snow, to which I had tied my horse, proved to have been the cross or weathercock of the steeple!
Without long consideration, I took one of my pistols, shot the bridle in two, brought down the horse, and proceeded on my journey.—Adventures of Baron Münchausen.
A RATHER LARGE WHALE
I embarked at Portsmouth, in a first-rate English man-of-war of one hundred guns and fourteen hundred men, for North America. Nothing worth relating happened till we arrived within three hundred leagues of the river St. Lawrence, when the ship struck with amazing force against (as we supposed) a rock. However, upon heaving the lead, we could find no bottom, even with three hundred fathoms. What made this circumstance the more wonderful, and indeed beyond all comprehension, was, that the violence of the shock was such that we lost our rudder, broke our bowsprit in the middle, and split all our masts from top to bottom, two of which went by the board. A poor fellow, who was aloft furling the main-sheet, was flung at least three leagues from the ship; but he fortunately saved his life by laying hold of the tail of a large sea-gull, which brought him back and lodged him on the very spot whence he was thrown. Another proof of the violence of the shock was the force with which the people between decks were driven against the floors above them. My head particularly was pressed into my stomach, where it continued some months before it returned to its natural situation.