A July Holiday in Saxony, Bohemia, and Silesia

by Walter White

I should like to take you with me in my walk through the Saxon Switzerland; but can only glance thereat for reasons already shown. If you have read Sir John Forbes's picturesque description of that romantic country published last year in his Sight-Seeing in Germany, you will not want another. I may, however, tell you, that you may visit all the most remarkable places in two days. Leave Dresden by steamer at six in the morning; disembark at Wehlen, walk from thence through the Uttewalde Grund to the Bastei, where, from the summit of a bastion rock springing from the Elbe, you have a magnificent view, with enough of water in it. You will see numerous specimens of those flat-topped hills, resembling the bases of mighty columns, such as we saw from the Milleschauer, and crag on crag, ridge on ridge, the gray stone shaded by forest for miles around. You will perceive Adersbach on a great scale; the same sort of sandstone split up in all directions, but the precipitous masses wide apart, isolated, and with glens and vales between all, glad with foliage and running water, instead of crevices and alleys.

From the Bastei you plunge down the zigzags among the crags to the Amselgrund, past the waterfall, and by wild ways to the Teufelsbruch and the Hochstein, an isolated crag, from which you look down into the Devil's Kettle, 350 feet deep. Then down through the Wolfschlucht, a crevice in the cliff, which, where you descend by ladders, looks very much like a wolf's-gully. It brings you into the Polenzthal, where on the grassy margin of a trout stream, beneath the shade of birches, precipitous cliffs towering high aloft, something grand and beautiful at every bend, you will believe it the loveliest scene of all. Then up the Brand—another out-look, and from thence down to Schandau, where you pass the night.

On the second day, walk up the Kirnitschthal to the Kuhstall, a broad arch in a honeycombed rock on the top of a hill; from thence to the Little Winterberg and Great Winterberg, the latter more than 1700 feet high—the highest point of the district, commanding a grand prospect over hill and hollow, crag and forest. While gazing around in admiration, you will perhaps wish that the old name—Meissner Highlands—had not been changed, for there is but little of the real Switzerland in the view.

Then on to the Prebischthor, crossing the frontier on the way into Bohemia at a lonely spot, uninfested as yet by guards or barrier. The Prebischthor is a huge arch, more than a hundred feet high, also on a hill-top, 1300 feet above the sea. Two mighty columns support a massive block, a hundred feet in length, forming a marvellous specimen of natural architecture. You can walk under and around its base, and look at the landscape through the opening, or mount to the summit and look down sheer eight hundred feet into the Prebischgrund. Here, as everywhere else, you find an inn, good beer, and musicians, a throng of tourists, and an album filled with names, and rhyming attempts at wit and sentiment.

From the Prebischthor you descend by the valley of the Kamnitz to Herniskretschen, a village built on a narrow level between tall frowning cliffs and the Elbe. I arrived here in time for the steamer at two o'clock, by which I returned to Dresden. I had seen the Saxon Switzerland from all the best points of view, and saw all the romantic course of the river, except the eight miles from Tetschen to Herniskretschen. A pleasanter two days' trip could not well be imagined. Once at Wehlen, the places to be visited are but from three to four miles apart; the way from one to the other is easy to find, and there is constant diversity of scenery, to say nothing of the talkative groups of Germans with whom you may join fellowship. But, in truth, it is a region to loiter in, and you will wish that weeks were yours instead of scanty days.

Soon after noon of the next day I was in Berlin. Travel the same route, and you will no longer wonder at the rapturous excitement of the Germans in the Riesengebirge. The country is one great plain—little fields, marshes, sluggish streams, ponds covered with water-lilies, windmills and sandy wastes sprinkled with a few trees that look miserable at having to grow in such a dreary land. Here and there a winding road—a mere deep-rutted track—winds across the landscape, making it look, if possible, still more melancholy. Look out when you will, you see the same monotonous features.

In our own happy country you would have the additional sorrow of an uncomfortable carriage. To know what outrageous inflictions can be perpetrated by railway monopoly, and endured by your long-suffering countrymen, just ride for once from London to Lowestofft in an Eastern Counties third-class carriage—you will have more than enough of North German scenery and of English discomfort, but without the compensations of German beer and German coffee. Or vary your experiences by a journey to Winchester in a second-class on the South-Western line, and try to enjoy the landscape through the wooden shutter which the Company give you for a window. Go to Euston-square—anywhere in fact—and you find that the passenger with most money in his pocket is the one most cared for. Even the Great Western and South-Eastern Companies, who have outgrown the short-sighted habit of building dungeons and calling them carriages—even these mighty monopolists condemn their second-class passengers to a wooden seat.

But on the line from Dresden to Berlin the third-class carriages are far more commodious than any second-class I have ever seen in England—except two or three at the Great Exhibition, which, perhaps, were meant only for show. The seats are broad, hollowed, and not flat, and with space enough between for the comfortable placing of your legs. The roof is lofty. You can stand upright with your hat on. At either end a broad shelf is fixed for small packages and light luggage; and more than all, the same civility and attention are extended by all the functionaries to third-class passengers as to the first. We brag of our liberty, and not without reason; but let us remember that the foreigner, though afflicted with passports, travels at less cost and with more comfort than we do.

Here, too, my fellow-passengers made merry over the "Palmerston gehänget" story; and many questions had I to answer concerning the coming marriage of the Prussian Prince and English Princess. I gave the same reply as to the Dresdener in the palace at Fischbach. One of the company, who told us he was a professor of literature at Berlin, inclined to be saucy. It was all a mistake to suppose that there was one jot more liberty in England than in Prussia. He could speak English, and knew all about it. Unluckily, by way of proving how well he could speak English, he said we should arrive at "Twelve past half;" whereupon I set the others laughing to take the conceit out of him. He relapsed into German, and looked so unhappy, that, by way of consolation, I told him of a countryman of his in England who went to keep an appointment at "clock five."

Berlin is a dreary, malodorous city, or rather an enormous village beginning to try to be a city; and fortunate in being the residence of men of taste and real artists who know what architecture and sculpture ought to be, as demonstrated by the improvements and embellishments around the palace and in the approach to that fine street Unter den Linden. You can hire a droschky to take you anywhere within the walls for fivepence; but be patient, for whether droschky or omnibus, the pace is as slow as if the drivers had to work for nothing. Pour le roi de Prusse, as the French say.