The charm of the enchanted ground,
And all its thousand turns disclose
Some fresh beauty varying round.”
The channel now becomes narrow, the stream swift and deep. As we pass castle after castle and behold the wrecks and ruins, we feel that we are “passing back down the stream of time.” Here on the left is the Loreli, a great rock rising up more than four hundred feet. According to the legend, a nymph had her dwelling in a cavern of this rock, and, with the music which issued forth from her golden harp, she enticed sailors and fishermen to their destruction in the terrific whirlpools and rapids at the foot of the precipice.
Passing the national monument erected in honor of Germany’s victory over France, in 1870, and Bingen, “fair Bingen on the Rhine,” we come at length to Mayence, a frontier town of fifty thousand inhabitants, strongly fortified with a garrison of thirty thousand soldiers. Mayence was founded B. C. 14, by Drusus, the son-in-law of Julius Caesar. Here the grandsons of Charlemagne met to divide his mighty empire into Germany, France, and Italy. This is the birthplace of Gutenberg who, in 1440, invented the art of printing. Mayence has shown her high appreciation of that gifted son of genius by erecting the handsome “Gutenberg Statue.”
CHAPTER XVII.
FROM FRANKFORT TO WORMS.