Away we went again, and always with fairer landscapes to greet our eyes. Past great high-prowed barges, towed slowly against the current by horses; past small barges, towed still more slowly by a dozen or twenty men. Past the Spürlingstein, and bastion-like cliffs, and hollows, beyond which you catch sight of far-away peaks. Then a village of timbered houses, the fronts showing broad lines of chequer-work and quaint gables, and every house standing apart in its own garden, among hills hung with woods to the water's edge; and rocks peering out here and there from the shadow of the trees, shutting you in all round as in a lake.
The sight of the varied features which open on you, increasing in beauty at every bend, will suggest frequent comparison. Here among the hills nature hems the Elbe in with loveliness, as if to prepare the great river for its long, dreary course from Dresden to the sea. You see not so many castles, but more variety than on the Rhine; more of untamed scenery, and less of monotonous vine-slopes; and perhaps you will incline to agree with those who hold that from Leitmeritz to Pirna the Elbe excels the far-famed stream that flows past Cologne.
Beautiful is the view of Tetschen, backed by grand wooded hills; the river, spanned by a chain-bridge, making a sudden bend; the castle looking down on the stream from a forward cliff. Though topped by a spire, the castle will inevitably remind you of a factory; and you will be constrained to look away from it to the tunnelled cliff through which the railway passes, and the noisy stream that tumbles in on the opposite side.
It had just struck one when I landed. The passport office was shut for two hours, that the functionaries might have time to dine—a praiseworthy arrangement, though trying at times to a traveller's patience. I dined at the Golden Crown, at one side of the great square, and regaled myself with a flask of Melniker—a right generous wine. The inn is the starting place for some twenty coaches and vans, and, looking round on the numerous guests as they went and came, it was easy to see you had left the Czechish for the German part of the population—oval faces for round ones.
In the centre of the square stands a building, which, in appearance a pedestal for a big statue, is a little chapel in which mass is said twice a day. I spent a few minutes in looking at it, then strolled to the castle garden and the bridge, from whence I saw carts backed axle deep into the river to receive cotton bales from a barge, and women loading a boat wading out above their knees with heavy sacks on their shoulders. Then to the school—a sight that gave me real pleasure, so spacious is the building, so numerous are the scholars, so earnest the master in his work. His discourse was that of one who has found his true vocation: he was seldom cast down, and felt persuaded that it was a master's own fault if he had no joy in his scholars. After our few brief words I thought the inscription at the door yet more appropriate:
Der Schule Saat reift für Zeit und Ewigkeit.[B]
At three o'clock I sought out the passport clerk, and found him not a whit more willing to give a visa for the mountains, or a place over the border, than his fellows elsewhere. He admitted the argument that one of the pleasures of travel was an unrestricted choice or change of route, but "could not" do more; so I looked at my map, and chose Reichenberg as my next point of departure, and the official stamp and signature were forthwith applied. But the gentleman discovered an irregularity, and did not let me depart till it was rectified—that the leaves containing the visas and the passport were separate sheets. He fastened them together with a broad seal and a loop of black and yellow thread, and then wished me a pleasant journey.
The wish was realized, for the route lies through a pretty country, the most populous and industrious part of Bohemia. It is heavy uphill work soon after leaving Tetschen, but the view from the top over the valley of the Elbe repays the labour, and rivals that from the Milleschauer. A little farther, and the prospect opens in the opposite direction, across a great wave, as it seems, of cones, ridges, scars, and rounded heights, sprinkled with spires and hamlets—a cheerful scene that invites you onwards.
At every mile you see and hear more and more of the signs of industry. Men pass you wheeling barrows laden with coloured glass rods—material for beads and fragile toys, to be manufactured at home in their own little cottages, keeping up the olden practice. Now you hear the hiss and whiz of the polishing wheel; now the rattle of looms, and the croak of stocking-weavers. And at times comes a man pushing before him a great barrowful of bread—large, flat, brown loaves—on his way to supply the off hamlets which have no bakery. And now and then old women creep by, bending under a burden of firewood. Two whom I overtook told me they walked three miles twice a week to fetch a bundle of sticks from the forest; and when I asked if they ate meat or cheese, answered with a "Gott bewahr! never. Nothing but bread and potatoes."