When you climb back to the summit the host will ask you to look at his museum, and collection of knick-knacks for sale—memorials of the Schneegruben. There are crystals, and specimens from the neighbouring rocks, and carvings cut out of the Knieholz, an excellent wood for the purpose. Among these latter are heads of Rübezahl, with roguish look and bearded chin, to be used as whistles, or terminations for mountain-staves. Or, if you desire it, he will fire a small mortar to startle the echoes. You may, however, rouse echoes for yourself by rolling big stones into the gulf; but beware lest you meet the fate of Anton, the guide, who, in 1825, while starting a lump of rock, lost his balance, fell over, and was dashed to pieces against the crags.
Such cliffs are said to be characteristic of the Riesengebirge. Another example of a Schneegrube occurs near Agnetendorf, which is six hundred feet deep. And close by it is the Wandering Stone, a huge granite block of thirty tons' weight, which has moved three times within memory, to the wonder of the neighbourhood. In 1810 it travelled three hundred feet, in 1822 two hundred, and in 1848, between the 18th and 19th of June, about twenty-five paces.
Another characteristic of these mountains, as I discovered, is that when you have climbed up one of their great steps or terraces, you have to make a deep descent on the farther side before coming to the next, whereby the labour of the ascent is increased. On leaving the Schneegruben, you traverse a level so thickly strewn with boulders and rocky fragments that you fancy more would not lie, till, coming presently to the descent, you find nothing but stone. In and out, rise and fall; now a long stride that shakes you rudely; now a cheating short step—such is the manner of your going down. Nothing but stone! the track in many places scarcely visible though trodden for years. You will think it a terrible stair before you have finished. Near the foot we met a party going up, one a lady seated in a Tragsessel—a sedan-chair without its case—carried by two men. Talk of palanquin-bearers in Hindoostan! their work must be play compared with that of these Silesian chair-carriers. I pitied them as they toiled up the stony steep, hard to climb with free limbs, much more so with such a burden; and yet they looked contented enough, though very damp. We met three more chairs, each with its lady, in the course of the next two hours.
Nothing has ever realized my idea of utter desolation so entirely as the sight of that stony steep when I looked back on it from below. A great rounded hill of stone, blocks on blocks up-piled to the summit, sullen as despair, notwithstanding the greenish tinge of clinging lichen. I wondered whether the accursed hills by the Dead Sea could look more desolate.
Rough walking now, through straggling Knieholz; across stony ridges, and past more of the uncouth piles of rock that look weird-like in the slanting sunbeams. All at once you hear the noise of a hurdy-gurdy: a surprise in so deserted a region, and you may fancy Rübezahl at his pranks again; but presently you see a beggar squatted in the bush, whose practised ear having caught the sound of footsteps before you came in sight, the squeak is set a-going to inspire charity. And now these musical surprises will beset you every half-mile—flageolet, tambourine, clarionet, or fiddle. Where do the musicians live? No signs of a house are visible near their lurking-places.
We came to a Baude, a lonely farmstead, with a few fields around: the dwelling roughly built of wood, without upper story. Many similar buildings are scattered among the mountains—cause of thankfulness to weary travellers, for the inmates are always ready with rustic fare and lodging. Here the guide had to ask the way, having already come farther than he knew. The path led us across swampy ground, where you walk for a mile or two on stepping-stones through open fir woods, always meeting some group of rocks. Another half-hour, and we emerged into a little green vale, shut in by high steep hills and forest, the Spindlerbaude standing at the upper end. My guide being afraid to venture farther, I released him, and engaged another; one in full professional costume—tall boots, peaked hat, and embroidered jacket—who undertook to go the remaining distance with me for twenty kreutzers. While I drank a glass of beer, a man and woman made the room ring again with harp and clarionet.
It was past six when we started, and betook ourselves at once to the steep ridge behind the Baude. Once up, we saw Schneekoppe rising as a dark cone in the distance, and away to the right the Mädelstein, so named from a shepherdess having been frozen to death while sheltering under the rock from a snow-storm. On the Bohemian side, towards the south, the view is confined; but northwards, over Silesia, it spreads far as eye can reach, the nearer region in deep shade, for the sun is dropping low. By-and-by we leave the broken stony ground for the grassy ridge of the Lahnberg, where the path skirts a cliff, which, curving round to the right and left, encloses the Grosser Teich, a black lake, on which you look down from a height of six hundred feet. The inky waters fill an oval basin about twenty-four acres in extent and seventy-five feet deep, and remain quite barren of fish, although attempts have been made to stock it with trout. The superflux forms a stream named the Great Lomnitz.
From hence more rock-masses are in sight: the Mittagstein, so named because the sun stands directly over it at mid-day, a sign to the haymakers and turf-diggers; the Dreisteine, fifty feet high, resembling the ruin of a castle, split into three by a lightning stroke a hundred years ago; the Katzenschloss (Cat's Castle) and others, which the guide will tell you owe their names to Rübezahl.
We cross the Teichfelder and look down on the Little Pond: a lively sheet of water, for the surface is rippled by a waterfall that leaps down the precipice, and beneath trout are numerous as angler can desire. You will notice something crater-like in the form of the cliffs of both ponds: no traces of lava are, however, to be discovered.
We passed the Devil's Gulf, through which flows the Silver Water, and came to more rough ground, and scrub, and lurking bagpipers. The veil of twilight was drawn over Silesia, and the peaks and ridges on the right loomed large and hazy against the darkening sky. We came to the Riesenbaude on the edge of the Riesengrund (Giant's Gulf), from which uprears a steeper slope than any we had yet encountered.