The Tyroleans are a fine gallant race of men and are excellent marksmen. They were formerly much attached to the House of Austria; but that attachment is now entirely changed to dislike, from the ingratitude they have met with, since they have been replaced under that scepter.
The only fault I find in the Tyroleans, is that they are rather too devout and consequently too much under the influence of the clergy. Yet in their devotion there is not the smallest tinge of hypocrisy and they are esteemed a highly moral people.
If you arrive at an inn in the evening, while the family are at prayer, neither master nor servants will come to wait on you, till prayers are over; and then you will be served with sufficient alacrity; but the prayers are rather long.
I believe the priests extort a good deal of money from these good people.
The road thro' the Tyrol was made by the Romans, in the time of Septimus
Severus. An immense number of Crucifixes on the road attest and command the
devotion of the people.
How Kotzebue can call Innspruck a dirty town I am at a loss to conceive. He must have visited it during very rainy weather; for to me it appears one of the cleanest and most chearful towns I have ever seen. There are several very fine buildings, for instance the Jesuits' College, and the Franciscan monastery; Nothing can be more picturesque than the situation of this city in the valley of the Inn and its romantic windings. The suburbs are very extensive and can boast several fine houses. The cupola of the Government House is gilded, which gives it a splendid appearance. In the Hofkirche or church of the court there are a number of statues, large as life, in bronze; among which my guide pointed out to me those of Clovis, Godfrey of Bouillon, Albert the Wise, Charles V, Philip II of Spain, Rudolph of Hapsburgh, and to my great astonishment the British King Arthur; there were twenty-eight statues altogether. But on my return to my inn, I found that my guide had made a great error respecting King Arthur, and that the said statue represented Prince Arthur, son of Henry VII, King of England, and not the old Hero of Romance; and my hostess' book further informed me that these statues were those of the Kings and Princes belonging to families connected by descent and blood with Maximilian I. In the same Hofkirche is a fine monument erected to Maximilian and a statue of bronze of this Emperor is figured kneeling between four bronze figures representing four Virtues. In the gardens of the Palace of the Archduke Ferdinand in this city is a fine equestrian statue which rests entirely on the hind feet of the horse. From Innspruck there is a water passage by the river Inn all the way to Vienna, as the Inn flows into the Danube at Passau. The banks of the Inn are so romantic and picturesque that I would willingly prolong my séjour at Innspruck, but as I mean to take the journey from Mittenwald to Munich by the river Isar, I must take advantage of the raft which starts from that place the day after to-morrow.
MUNICH, 20th July.
I left Innspruck in a chaise de poste on the 16th, and arrived the same evening at five o'clock at Mittenwald. At a short distance before I arrived at Mittenwald, I entered the Bavarian territory, which announces itself by a turnpike gate painted white and blue, the colours and Feldzeichen of Bavaria. In the Austrian territory the barriers are painted black and yellow, these being the characteristic colors of Austria.
Mittenwald is a small neat town, offering nothing remarkable but a church yard or Ruhe-garten (garden of repose) as it is called, where there are a number of quaint inscriptions on the tombstones. At Mittenwald I had some trouble about my passport, as it was not visé by a Bavarian authority; but I explained to the officer that I had never fallen in with any Bavarian authority since I left Rome, and that, while at Rome, I had no intention of going thro' Bavaria; that at Milan the Austrian authorities had visé my passport for Vienna and that I should only pass thro' Munich, without making a longer stay than one week. He acquiesced in my argument, but inserted my explanation on the passport. At half a quarter of a mile beyond Mittenwald I met the raft just about to get under weigh at eleven o'clock a.m. This raft is about as long as the length of a thirty-six gun frigate, and formed of spars fastened together; on this is a platform about one and a half feet high. The Isar begins its course close to Mittenwald, and the place on which the raft stood, previous to departure, was very shallow; but water was quickly let in from sluices to float the raft, and off we set with a cargo of peasants, male and female, and merchandise bound for Munich. As the river Isar rushes between immense mountains, and forms a continual descent until the plains of Bavaria open to view, you may conceive with what rapidity we went. We encountered several falls of water of two, three, four and sometimes five feet which we had to shoot, which no boat could possibly do without being upset. The lower part of the raft was frequently under water in making these shoots and we were obliged to hold on fast to our seats to prevent being jerked off. Nothing can be more romantic and picturesque than this journey, and there is something aweful in shooting these falls; these rafts are, however, so solidly constructed that there is no danger whatever. They can neither sink nor upset. We arrived and halted the evening at Tölz, a large village or town on the right bank of the Isar. What gives to Tölz a remarkably singular appearance is, that on a height at a short distance from the town, and hanging abruptly over the river, you perceive several figures in wood, larger than the life, which figures form groups, representing the whole history of the passion of Jesus Christ. At a short distance, if you are not prepared for this, you suppose that they are real men, and that a procession or execution is going forward. On landing I immediately ascended this hill in order to observe this curiosity, and there I beheld the following groups, first: Christ in the midst of his disciples preaching; secondly: the disciples asleep in a cave, and Christ watching and praying; next was Judas betraying Christ to the soldiery; then the judgment of Christ before Pilate; then Christ bearing his cross to the place of execution; and lastly the crucifixion on Mount Calvary. The ground is curiously laid out so as to represent, as much as possible, the ground in the environs of Jerusalem. Tölz is a pretty village, but contains nothing more remarkable than the above groups.
The next day at twelve o'clock we perceived the spires of Munich, and at two anchored close to one of the bridges from whence, having hired a wheelbarrow to trundle my portmanteau, I repaired to the inn called the Golden Cross—Zum goldenen Kreutz. At Tölz the Rhetian Alps recede from the view; the landscape then presents a sloping plain which is perfectly level within four miles of Munich. The river widens immediately on issuing from the gorges of the Tyrol and for the last five miles we were followed by boys on the banks of the river, begging for wood, with which our raft was laden, and we threw to them many a faggot. Wood is the great export from the Tyrol to Bavaria, as the latter is a flat country and has not much wood, with which on the contrary the Tyrol abounds. A sensible difference of climate is now felt and the air is keener than in the Tyrol. The price of a place on the raft from Mittenwald to Munich cost only one florin, and at Tölz an excellent supper, bed and coffee in the morning cost me only one florin.
MUNICH, 23rd July.