They believed then; but having travelled the road prescribed to me by Father Hübner, could not imagine the distance from the mountain to be but about twenty miles.
By rising early the next morning, when all was bright and fresh and the dust laid by the night's rain, I got time for another stroll among the rocks, and to walk two miles farther down the valley to Weckelsdorf, where another part of the rocky labyrinth is explorable. The rocks here are on a greater scale than at Adersbach, and rising on the slope of a hill, their romantic effect is increased, as also the difficulty of wandering among them. The proprietor, Count von Nummerskirch, has, however, taken pains to render them accessible by bridges, galleries, and stairs. A sitting figure, whose head-dress resembles that of the maidens of Braunau, is named the Bride of Braunau; near her is the Stone of Tears; the Todtengasse (Death's Alley) is never illumined by a ray of sunshine; there is the Cathedral, and near it Diana's Bath; and at last the Minster, a natural temple, the roof a lofty pointed arch, where, while you walk up and down in the dim light, an organ fills the place with a burst of sound. It is sometimes called the Mint, or Money Church, because of a gang of coiners having once made it their head-quarters. The rocks have been a hiding-place for others as well as rogues. During the Hussite wars, many families found a refuge within their intricate recesses, little liable to a surprise, at a time when entrance was hardly possible owing to the numerous obstructions.
As at Adersbach, there is a fee to pay for unlocking a door; there is an echo which answers the guide's voice, his pistol and horn, and has to be paid for. Nevertheless, you will neither regret the outlay of time and kreutzers in your visit to Weckelsdorf. If able to prolong your stay, you may take an excursion of a few hours to the Heuscheuer, and see a smaller Adersbach on its very summit—the highest of these extraordinary rock-formations. Or there is the ruin of Bischoffstein, within an easy walk, once the stronghold of the Bohdanetski family, who held half a score of castles around the neighbourhood, and made themselves obnoxious by their Protestantism and robberies, and envied for their wealth. They suffered at times by siege and onslaught from their neighbours, and at length their castles were demolished, and forty-seven Bohdanetskis and adherents were hanged by the emperor's command. The rest of the family, it is said, took flight, and settled in England. Is Baddenskey, who sits wearily at his loom down there in joyless Spitalfields, a descendant?
I returned to the Felsenstadt for my knapsack. For supper, bed, and breakfast the charge was equal to three and threepence, in which was included an extra fifteen kreutzers for the bedroom, which I had insisted on having all to myself. When guests are very numerous they have to sleep four in a room. Take your change in Prussian money, for "Kaiserliches geld," as the folk here call it—that is, imperial money—will not be current where you stop to dine.
I retraced my steps for about a mile along the road by which I came yesterday, and at the church took a road branching off to the right. It leads through Ober Adersbach. The villagers were going to church: the men wearing tall polished boots and jackets, the women with their heads ungracefully muffled in red, blue, green, or yellow kerchiefs, and displaying broad, showy skirts and aprons, and clean white stockings. Now and then came an exception: a man in a light-blue jacket, and loose, baggy breeches; a woman with a stiff-starched head-dress, not unlike those worn in Normandy.
The road continually rises, and by-and-by you cannot tell the main track from the byeways among the cottages. Still ascending, however, you come out a short distance farther on the brow of a precipitous hill, where you are agreeably surprised by another Silesian view—broad, rolling fields of good red land, bearing vetches, clover, flax, and barley, the little town of Schömberg in their midst, and always hills on the horizon. From the brow, a deep lane and a path through the fir-wood on the cliffy hill-side, lead you down to the road where finger-posts, painted black and white, indicate that we have exchanged the Austrian eagle for the Prussian. I must have crossed the frontier two or three times yesterday and to-day, but I saw no custom-house anywhere, and no guards, except at Grenzbäuden.
Other signs showed me on nearing Schömberg that I had left Bohemia. The men are tall, of sallow complexion, and angular face. They wear long dark-blue coats and boots up to their knees, and stiff blue caps with a broad crown, and they carry pink or blue umbrellas. The women wear the same colour, and do not look attractive; and there is an Evangelische Kirche, in which the preaching is of Protestant faith and doctrine.
The town has two thousand inhabitants, some of whom dwell in houses that are a pleasure to look upon, around the market-place. The gables—no two alike—are painted pale green, white, gray, or yellow, and what with the ornaments, the broken outlines, and arcades of wood and brick, the great square makes up a better picture than is to be seen in many a famous city. Although Sunday, the mill turned by the Kratzbach clacks briskly; there are stalls of fruit, bread, and toys under the arcades, and by the side of two or three wagons in the centre a group of blue-coated men. They look sedate, and talk very quietly, as if they felt the day were not for work.
From hence the road, planted with beeches, limes, and mountain-ash, leads across well-cultivated fields, and between wooded slopes of the Ueberschar hills to Ullersdorf, where Schneekoppe is seen peeping over a dark ridge on the left. I asked one of the weavers who inhabit here if he earned two dollars a week.
"Gott bewahr!" he exclaimed, opening his eyes and holding up his hands apparently in utter amazement, "that would be too gladsome (frolich). No; I can be thankful for one dollar."