stic utensils; children and old men go
to the solitary pasture where echo dwells, where the national song
springs forth with the wild mountain flower! Dost thou see the
procession?--paint it if thou canst! The broad wooden cart laden high
with chests and barrels, with jars and with crockery. The bright
copper kettle and the tin dish shine in the sun. The old grandmother
sits at the top of the load and holds her spinning-wheel, which
completes the pyramid. The father drives the horse, the mother carries
the youngest child on her back, sewed up in a skin, and the procession
moves on step by step. The cattle are driven by the half-grown
children: they have stuck a birch branch between one of the cows'
horns, but she does not appear to be proud of her finery, she goes the
same quiet pace as the others and lashes the saucy flies with her
tail. If the night becomes cold on this solitary pasture, there is
fuel enough here--the tree falls of itself from old age and lies and
rots.

But take especial care of the fire fear the fire-spirit in the forest
desert! He comes from the unextinguishable pile--he comes from the
thunder-cloud, riding on the blue lightning's flame, which kindles the
thick, dry moss of the earth: trees and bushes are kindled, the flames
run from tree to tree--it is like a snow-storm of fire! the flame
leaps to the tops of the trees--what a crackling and roaring, as if it
were the ocean in its course! The birds fly upward in flocks, and fall
down suffocated by the smoke; the animals flee, or, encircled by the
fire, are consumed in it! Hear their cries and roars of agony! The
howling of the wolf and the bear, dos't thou know it? A calm,
rainy-day, and the forest-plains themselves, alone are able to confine
the fiery sea, and the burnt forest stands charred, with black trunks
and black stumps of trees, as we saw them here in the forest by the
broad high-road. On this road we continue to travel, but it becomes
worse and worse; it is, properly speaking, no road at all, but it is
about to become one. Large stones lie half dug up, and we drive past
them; large trees are cast down, and obstruct our way, and therefore
we must descend from the carriage. The horses are taken out, and the
peasants help to lift and push the carriage forward over ditches and
opened paths.

The sun now ceases to shine; some few rain-drops fall, and now it is a
steady rain. But how it causes the birch to shed its fragrance! At a
distance t