"Did you taste the Hungarian wine?" is the question asked of all who wander to the Giant Mountains.
The two Breslauers were not less ready for breakfast than myself. We each had a half-bottle of the famous wine, and truly its reputation is not unmerited. If you can imagine liquid amber suffused with sunshine, you will know what its colour is. It looks syrupy, and has the flavour of a sweet Madeira, not, as it appeared to me, provocative of a desire for more. Neither of the Breslauers inclined to try a second half-bottle, notwithstanding their exuberant praises; but one of them, sitting down to the piano, broke out with a
"Vivat vinum Hungaricum"
that made the room echo again. Its price is about twenty pence a bottle; but once across the boundary line, and you must pay three shillings. In winter, when snow lies deep, sledge-parties glide hither from Schmideberg to drink Hungarian, have a frolic, and then skim homewards down-hill swift as the wind.
I had a talk with Meinherr Hübner about the shortest way to Schatzlar. To think of going to Adersbach through Schatzlar was, he assured me, a grand mistake. The road was very hilly, hard to find, and, under the most favourable circumstances, I need not look to walk the distance in less than eighteen hours. My Frankfort map, with all its imperfections, had not yet misled me: it showed the route by Schatzlar to be the shortest, and on that I insisted.
"Take my advice," rejoined Hübner; "it has forty years' experience to back it. Go down to Hermsdorf, and from thence through Liebau and Schömberg. That is the only way possible for you. The other will take you eighteen hours."
The route suggested was that I hoped to follow on leaving Adersbach, and to travel twice over the same ground did not suit my inclination, and it was the longest. Moreover, I wished to keep within the Schmiedeberger Kamm; and forty years' experience to the contrary notwithstanding, I refused to be advised.
I may as well mention at once that by five in the afternoon of the same day I was in Adersbach.
CHAPTER XXII.
The Frontier Guard-house—A Volunteer Guide—A Knave—Schatzlar—Bernsdorf—A Barefoot Philosopher—A Weaver's Happiness—Altendorf—Queer Beer—A Short Cut—Blunt Manners—Adersbach—Singular Rocks—Gasthaus zur Felsenstadt—The Rock City—The Grand Entrance—The Sugarloaf—The Pulpit—The Giant's Glove—The Gallows—The Burgomaster—Lord Brougham's Profile—The Breslau Wool-market—The Shameless Maiden—The Silver Spring—The Waterfall—A Waterspout—The Lightning Stroke.