Gradually the hoary rocks looked spectral-like, for the dusk increased, the clouds gathered heavily, and rain began to fall. I walked back to the inn, feeling deeply the force of the Ettrick Shepherd's words, "After a', what is any description by us puir creturs o' the works o' the great God?"
CHAPTER XXIV.
Baked Chickens—A Discussion—Weckelsdorf—More Rocks—The Stone of Tears—Death's Alley—Diana's Bath—The Minster—Gang of Coiners—The Bohdanetskis—Going to Church—Another Silesian View—Good-bye to Bohemia—Schömberg—Silesian Faces and Costume—Picturesque Market-place—Ueberschar Hills—Ullersdorf—An amazed Weaver—Liebau—Cheap Cherries—The Prussian Simplon—Ornamented Houses—Buchwald—The Bober—Dittersbach—Schmiedeberg—Rübezahl's Trick upon Travellers—Tourists' Rendezvous—The Duellists' Successors—Erdmannsdorf—Tyrolese Colony.
As Grenzbäuden is renowned for Hungarian wine, so is Adersbach for baked chickens, and every guest, unless he be a greenhorn, eats two for supper. They are very relishing, and quite small enough to prevent any breach of your moderate habit.
Visitors were numerous: some reading their guide-books, some beginning supper, some finishing, some rounding up the evening with another bottle—for Hungarian is to be had in Adersbach. A party near me sat discussing with much animation the demerits of the taxes which impoverish, and of the beggars who importune, travellers around the City of the Rocks, and they drew an inference that the landlord's charges would not be parsimonious. Then they wandered off into the question of temperature—the temperature of Schneekoppe. Not one of them had yet trodden old Snowhead, so they went on guessing at the question, till I mentioned that it had been very cold up there in the morning.
"In the morning! This morning? Heut, mean you?"
"Yes, this very morning; for I was up there."
"Heut! Heut! Heut! Heut!" ejaculated one after another, the last apparently more surprised than the first.
"Yes, this very day."
They would not believe it. I took up a sprig of heather from the side of my plate, which I had gathered on Schwarzkoppe, and showed them that as a token; and explained that the distance was, after all, not so very great, and might have been shortened had I descended directly from the Koppe into the Riesengrund, and laid my course through the village of Dorngrund.