The town is now famous chiefly for the production of some excellent cakes with the quaint name of "quiches" probably only a corruption of the German Küchlein.
To the guests at the baths of Plombières, the lake region which lies between Remiremont and St. Dié is better known than to the general world, as it lies out of the way of tourists' thoroughfares; but though it cannot quite compete in beauty with the English or Scotch lakes, or Killarney, it is well worth a visit to those who are not obliged to go a great distance to see it. Instead of going due east to the source of the Moselle and the pass over the main chain of the Vosges which leads to Wesserling, and thence by rail to Basel, the road to Gérardmer turns to the left along a valley parallel to the line of the mountains, and flanked by lower hills, well wooded, on its other side. The foregrounds have the usual broken and diversified character of a granitic country, and the height of the hills is sufficient to make the distant views in many parts highly pleasing. There is enough picturesque incident to beguile very pleasantly the eighteen miles or so which the diligence traverses to Gérardmer. The name, derived from Gérard, a duke of Lorraine, has been given to a fine oblong sheet of clear water, about two miles long, and half a mile broad, bounded for the greatest part of its circumstance by long slopes covered with meadows and white cottages at intervals, but on the east by a pine forest and rocks, which give a more savage aspect to its further banks. From the Swiss villas built on its banks, the numerous pleasure-boats, and the general lively aspect, it brings to mind the lake of Zurich in miniature. At its further end is an immensely long village, also called Gérardmer, the most distinguishing mark of which is an enormous wych elm of unknown antiquity, standing in the market place.
In the summer, Gérardmer is full of visitors, who are well entertained at the Hôtel de la Poste and the Hôtel des Vosges at a moderate rate. The latter of these is conducted by an indefatigable little landlady, who is full of civilities, assisted by a good-natured, gigantic husband, who seems to superintend the kitchen department, and generally was seen during our visit lounging somewhere about the entrance, conspicuous in white trousers and a shirt of violet flannel, trimmed with scarlet. The wide road beyond Gérardmer branches to the right and left. The left branch leads into a valley choked with a primaeval pine forest, in the depths of which roars the torrent of the Vologne. The trees are of immense size, and completely clad with pendants of moss and lichen, telling of a considerable elevation of site, and of such weird and grand forms as to make one wish that the art of forest culture which fells the trees at a premature age had never been introduced. In one spot, not far from the so-called "Basse des Ours," or Bear Bottom, where the huge granite-blocks that have fallen from the crest of a mountain have been huddled together, a natural ice-house has been formed in the interstices, called "La glacière," and the fact of our finding no ice in it was accounted for by the summer not having been sufficiently hot to produce the necessary amount of evaporation. The road to the right passes over the torrent, by a bridge, and then divides again, its right branch leading over the mountains into the valley of Münster in Alsace, and its left to St. Dié. On the road to St. Dié two pines are seen which have grown together like Siamese twins.
Near the bridge is a cascade of singular beauty, which, from a peculiarity it possesses in changing its entire aspect as the spectator changes his ground, is called the Cascade des Fées. Not far from this cascade is a large slab of granite, and a fountain where Charlemagne is said to have dined when he passed out of Alsace over the Vosges into Lorraine, at a time when all the country was wild forest. A rough bridle road to the right leaves the main road to the Schlucht pass and the valley of Münster, and, making for a gap in the hill, soon discloses the beautiful piece of water called Longemer, or "The Long Lake," the Ullswater, as Gérardmer is the Windermere of Lorraine. It runs in a long trough between beautifully wooded steeps for about two miles, with a slightly serpentine direction, prettily broken by spits of grassy land with a few low trees upon them. At the upper end is seen, above woody heights, the bald summit of the Honeck, (Hoheneck, "The High Corner",) an eminence about four thousand feet high. At the lower end, shaded by lofty trees, is a little chapel on a tongue of land, dedicated to St. Bartholomew by an anchorite named Bilon, and near it a solitary villa belonging to a medical gentleman of the neighborhood, who spends his summer holidays in this Arcadian seclusion, boating and fishing in the lake and the clear stream that runs out of it. By a path to the right, following the sinuosities of the lake, a rocky barrier is reached, down whose face tumbles, among rocks and trees, a lovely waterfall; and when this is passed, another lake is disclosed, a round, low-lying basin, among dense woods and frowning escarpments, one of them called the Rock of the Devil, which bears the name of Retournemer, or "The Lake of Return." A solitary dwelling, backed by fine beeches and other trees, stands on the brink, the cottage of the forester, where the wanderer to this end of the world finds hospitable entertainment. But notwithstanding the impassable look of the scenery round, a zig-zag path through the trees climbs the height behind the house, and joins the road which leads to the Col de la Schlucht, where a beautiful view opens into Alsace, its most prominent objects being that long spur of the Vosges which terminates by Colmar, and on the other side a broken granite wall, crowned by a peculiarly imposing cap of rock, under which the road descends to the green slopes about Münster, which are variegated with acres of bleaching linen, the product of the weaving industry which pervades the whole country. On the Col itself is a spacious chalet or hotel, with excellent accommodation and abundant fare, to which appetites whetted by the bracing mountain air are inclined to do full justice. From this point, by walking up a long slope in a southerly direction, the top of the Honeck is reached, grazed over by herds of cattle tinkling with Alpine bells, and commanding a spacious view over the valley of the Rhine to the distant Black Forest, with tremendous precipices in the foreground on the side of Alsace. Instead of returning from this point direct to Gérardmer, I walked through a forest of apparently blasted horn-beam, as grisly as the trees in Gustave Doré's drawings, into a long valley, which led in course of time to a busy place called La Bresse, and thence, turning to the right, over a moderately high pass back to Gérardmer. Besides the three lakes already mentioned, there is Blanchemer, or the "White Lake," in the valley of the Mosellote; the Lac de Corbeaux, so-called from an overhanging cliff frequented by ravens; the Lac de Lispach, rich in fish, divided by a ridge from Longemer, and the Lac de Marchet, on the flank of a mountain not far from Bresse. The so-called White, Black, and Green lakes belonging to Alsace are situated further to the north on that side of the Vosges chain which looks toward the Rhine. On one of the mounds of the Honeck mountain there is an abundant and perennial spring, called La Fontaine de la Duchesse, which perhaps possesses a higher claim to be the source of the Moselle than the more trifling stream which descends by Bussang, though the latter pours its contribution in a more direct line. The sources of rivers, whether small or great, are generally controvertible. Some consider the Inn, which rises in the Grisons, as having more claim to be the real Danube than the river which rises at Donaueschingen, and, between the rival claims of the Victoria Nyanza of Speke and the Albert Nyanza of Baker, the real head of mighty Nilus himself still remains an open question for geographers.
Original.
Columbus
Three Scenes.
'Tis midnight; through the lozenge panes
Flashes a southern storm;
And the lightning flings its livid stains
O'er a bowed and wearied form.
He stands, like a ship once staunch and stout
By billows too long opprest;
And a fiercer storm than whirls without
Tears through his heaving breast.
His hand is pressed on his aching brow,
And veils his eyes' dark light,
And a twinkling cresset's dim red glow,
When the lightning pales, doth sadly flow
O'er locks where many a thread of snow
Tells of time's troubled flight.
He stands—a fading, a clouded star,
Half-hid in the rack of heaven's war;
Or, like a vanquished warrior, one
Whose heart is crushed, whose hopes are gone
After many a gallant fight.
He turns and he paces the damp stone floor,
And his glance seeks the damper wall,
Where the charts, o'er which he had loved to pore,
Like arras rise and fall.
There is his heart's most cherished store,
There lie the fruits of his deepest lore,
And his lips, as he views them o'er and o'er,
His withered life recall:
"And was it all a dream?
Is this the bitter waking?
And is hope's heavenly beam
For aye my soul forsaking?
I thought to see the cross unfurled
Upon the hills of a far-off world!
To bear the faith of the Crucified
Far o'er the wild Atlantic's tide!
To see adored the Christian's God
Where Christian foot hath never trod!
Sure brighter dreams from heaven ne'er fell
And I wake in this cold, dim cell!
"And were they, too, but dreams——
Those lands far in the West,
Where robed in sunset beams
The Seven Cities rest?
Far, far beyond the blue Azores,
I thought to press the ocean's shores;
The heaving, restless main to span,
And give—and give—a world to man!
A new-born world of vernal skies
Fresh with the breath of paradise—
A world that yet would place my name
The foremost on the scroll of fame.
And now I wake, poor, friendless, lone,
'Mid these dripping walls of stone.
"And was it but a dream
I left fair Italy?
To chase the churchyard gleam
Of false expectancy—
That light which, like the swamp's pale glare,
Lures but to darkness and despair?
To crush the visions youth built up?
Drink to its poisoned dregs the cup
Of hope deferred and trust misplaced?
To feel heart shrink and body waste?
And still like drowning wretch to cry,
'One more effort and I die!'"