Content with one dollar a week, which means a perpetual diet of rye bread and potatoes.
Liebau and Schömberg, about five miles apart, are in many respects twin towns. If Liebau has not a strikingly picturesque market-place, nor a reputation for Knackwürsten (smoked sausage), it has a new Protestant church, some good paintings in the Romish church, and a Kreuzberg, once the resort of thousands of pilgrims. The neighbouring Tartarnberg was, according to tradition, the site of a Tartar camp in 1241. Rusty, half-decayed horseshoes and arrow-heads are still found at times upon it.
After dining at the Sonne, I bought a dessert at a stall under the arcade: the woman gave me nearly a gallon of cherries for three-halfpence, with which I started for Schmiedeberg, ten miles farther. Numbers of villagers were walking on the road, all the women bedecked with pink aprons, and looking healthy and happy. Perhaps out of twenty or more chubby-faced children, who manifested a lively appetite for fruit, two or three will remember that they met a strange man who gave them a handful of cherries, and how that their mothers became all of a sudden eloquent with thanks, and bade them kiss their hands, and do something pretty. Unluckily, by the time I had gone two miles there was an end of the cherries.
The road runs between the Schmiedeberger Kamm and the Landeshuter Kamm. The main road, which crosses the latter from Schmiedeberg to Landeshut, is called the Prussian or Silesian Simplon, for it is the highest macadamized road in Prussia, its summit being at an elevation of more than 2200 feet. Extra horses are required to pass it; and the saying goes that millions of dollars have been paid on a stone at the top, known as the Vorspannsteine.
Among rural objects you see huge barns; a tiled roof resting on tall, square pillars of brick, the intervals between which are boarded. And here and there a farm, with all the homestead enclosed by a high whitewashed wall, which has two arched entrances. The cottages are low, their roofs a combination of thatch and shingle, their shutters an exhibition of rustic art, bright red, with an ornamental wreath in the centre of the panels; and the wooden column, on which a saint stands by the wayside, displays a flowery spiral on a ground of lively green. To a man who was leaning over his gate, I said that it was very stupid to mar the effect of such artistic decorations by a slushy midden at the front door.
"We don't think so: we are used to it," was his answer.
Now and then you meet a little low wagon, the tilt-hoops painted blue, and the harness glittering with numerous rings and small round plates of brass. In the village of Buchwald the mill was at work, and the men were busy at the grindstone grinding their scythe-blades in readiness for the morrow. Here we come upon the Bober, grown to a lively stream, running along the edge of the far-spreading meadows on the left. About half a mile farther a wagon-track slants off to the right, making a short cut over the Kamm to Schmiedeberg. It leads you by pleasant ways along hill-sides, across fields and meadows, into lonely vales and solitary lanes, that end on shaggy heather slopes. To me the walk was delightful, for uninterrupted sunshine, a merry breeze, and rural peace, favourable to the luxury of idle thought, lent a charm to pretty scenery.
From Dittersbach the road ascends the Passberg, which, on the farther side, sends down a steep descent to Schmiedeberg. The town lies in a deep valley, and is so long from one extremity of its scattered outskirts to the other that you will be nearly an hour in walking through it, while, for the most part, it is little more than one street in width. It has an ancient look, and, owing to the many gardens and bleaching-grounds among the houses, combines country with town. The Rathhaus is a fine specimen of tasteful architecture.
From working in iron, the Schmiedebergers have turned to the making of shawls and plush, and the entertainment of holiday travellers. The iron trade began in an adventure on the Riesengebirge. Two men were crossing the mountains, when one, whose shoes were thickly nailed, found himself suddenly held fast on the stony path, unable to advance or return. He shook with terror. What else could it be than a spell thrown over him by Rübezahl? At length, by the other's assistance, he broke the spell; and the two having brought away with them the stone of detention, it was recognised as magnetic iron stone; and already, in the twelfth century, iron works were established, around which Schmiedeberg grew into a town. It now numbers four thousand inhabitants.
Hither come tourists from far to see the mountains; and during your half hour's rest at the Schwarzes Ross, you will be amused by witnessing the eager manifestations of the newly-arrived, their exuberant gestures while bargaining with a guide, and the liberal way—the bargain once made—in which they load him with rugs, cloaks, coats, caps, bonnets, bags, bundles, umbrellas, parasols, and other travelling gear, until he carries a mountain on his own shoulders. Besides the trip to Schneekoppe, some mount to the great beech-tree and the Friesenstein, on the Landeshuter Kamm; or visit the laboratories at Krummhübel, where liqueurs, oils, and essences, are distilled and prepared from native plants: chemical operations first set on foot in 1700 by a few students of medicine who fled from Prague to escape the consequences of a duel. And some go beyond Krummhübel to look at Wolfshau, a place in the entrance of the Melzergrund, so shut in by wooded hills that it never sees the sun during December. And some to the village of Steinseifen, where, among iron-workers and herbalists, dwell skilful wood-carvers; one of whom for a small fee exhibits a large model of the Riesengebirge—a specimen of his own handiwork.