On The Beautiful Rhine

Carlsruhe, Gek., July 20, 1895. Dear Mr. Editor: To resume my travels up the beautiful Rhihe, I must begin with the stoned okl watch tower at Andernach, with ts octagonal suinmit and the huge scar in ts side which tells of French cannonadiug in 16S8. We stop and stare at such things while the crowd stares at us. How important we feel to excite more interest than these venerable oíd ruins. Every town along here has some extra-ordinary wine. Either some knight of renown or hero died here and improved the wine or some dragon's blood still filters through the vine ná gives a magie flavor to the liquor. At Newweid, are the Moraoian Brothers, the Quakers of Germany, formerly followers of Hites. "Love feasts" and the dweiling apart of unmarriéd brethreu are peculiarities of this seet. ( ne of the chamas of traveling in historie old Europe is the gazing reverently upon the tomb of some hero or great man, seeing his birthplace or the house in which some great work was accomplished. At Bonn, we saw Beethoven'a birthplace; and througliout the Rhine valley greater or less celebrities have hallowed inaiiy a spot and made it a shrine. The university buildings at Bonn are antique piles, crumbling and cracking and replete with signs of age. I must hurry yoü on to Coblenz, where we stood on the Moselle bridge and were hypuotized by the power and majesty of the fortification of Ehrenbieitsteiu. Tliat huge fortress bas the appearance of growing there as it stands in its red sandstone massiveness on a bold, beetling beadland. Nature made it able and man has improved on nature. It is so artistic that it is the charm of the river at this point. We viewed it again as we walked along the beaütiful Rhine Promenade. The latter is a Paradise for Cupid's victiais and also for the less poetic. Leaving Coblenz, we were soon again riding between the almost perpendicular walls of the river. It is wonderful how a Kardeii s mat]e ancj thrives on a slope of 45 degrees. We cali them Gothic gardens. The vines are grown on terraces only a few feet in width and as these are faced with flint and basaltic rock, it appears to one ;iooking from below as if the vines grew upon rocks. One luige headlandafteranother thrusts its nose out into the river and holds upon its seemingly inaccessible summit, a tnighty ruin whicb tells of cliivralry and, too, of dark ages and oppression. Tlironirs of historie associations surround the old Konigs Stuhl or king's chair, wbich stands now in lonely majesty by the side of the Rhine. Here so man y Germán kings were chosen by the electors, who met in this open octagonal edifice of stone, looked upon the Rhine and chose a king for it. Every town along this wonderful Rhine is a picture with its ivy-covered ehurch : its narrow, cougested streets; its doorways where dames as old, it seems, as their dwellings, sit and knik or nierely croon ; its old men, too, with their fat, wrinkled faces and the long stemmed pipes which smoke away as steadily as volcanoes ; and, lastly, the ever present groups of soldier boys. Germany is a vast military camp and we eee more young men in uniforms than without. It is iuteresting to note the changes time has wrought. Bénédictine monasteries and nuueries have become hydropathic establishments or museums, churches have become town halls, and jails and dungeons, wine cellars. The twin castles at Bornhofen have a legend, pleasiug and pathetic. Conrad and Heinrich, brothers, and lovers of tl ie beautii'ul Hildegarde, are the héroes. Heinrich leaves the fair prize to his brother and goes away to the Crusades. The father of the youths builds the lcgended castles for Conrad and his proposed bride. Love cools. Conrad goes also to the Crusades and returns with a beautiful Grecian bride. Hildegarde shuts herself in a lonely castle room and sees no one. Heinrich returns and chivralrously challenges Conrad to mortal combat. Hildegarde interposes, wins a relucant reconciliation and retires to the convent of Boronhofen. The Grecian bride is false, Conrad begs his brother's iorgiveness and the estrange'ment ceases ; they live in the ancestral castle, while the new one is forever deserted. The Xwo Brothers, as the castles are called, are charming rains. Near Bt. Goar, we saw the castle derisively culled the "Mouse" by the haughty owner of the "Katz" near St. i'. We are initiated according to the good old custom at St. Goar which comI"'1'- anger to choose one of two als- water or wine. Water, and he got a good ducking in the Rhine. Wiue, and he drink a goblet to the meinory of Charleuiagne, the queenof England, the reigning prince and then because a aeuiber of their society upon giving a small donation for the poor. Genial custom ! Here attractions. carne thick and last. The grand and gloomy, old ■:1e of the Rhinefels, the "Bank," a sunken crag over which the water seetbes in rápida and whirling eddies, its companionpiece "Lurlei," the precipice froni whiefa the nymph used to entice the sailors to the cruel waters ot the rapids. Heine saw the poetry of tliis and preserved it in his famous bailad. From poetry to business. There are salmon fisheries near here - oh ! yes and a famous echo. The rocks of the Seven Yirgins stand as a fearful warning to the girl, arabitious never to wed. The rivèr god wratlifully wrouglit this metamorphosis and now these sweet girls have to lie tliere in the wet forever. A few more castles and then the Pfalz, a tower standing on a rock in the midst of the lïliine stream. This edifice has a pentagonal tower and extremely unsightly roof but is very suggestive of song and story. At Eocharach, is the Gothic trefoil formed ruin of the church of St. Werner, built because the sainted boy, St. Werner, floated up-stream after beina nmrdered, and stopped there. Now we saw the most picturesque of all castles, the Rheinstein, and resolved to visit it. We clambered up the zigzag pathway where the rocks have formed in so many grotesque and beautiful shapes and at last stood at the castle gate. Tlie castle has been restored in ancient style and we were piloted by a charming Germán danisel through armorial halls and massive piunacled towers. A fine collection of armor and antiquïties is shown and we saw the the bedroom used by Frederick of Prussia. A short way down the river is fhe Hingen Loch or rapids and then the islaud witli the mouse-tower, so called because the Archbishop Hatto, compared the famine suffering people to mice and caused some to be burned in a barn, was pursued by the real vermin even to the tower of refuge and there deyoured. Then Bingen, but that must wait until next time.