will flow southward into
the Mayn; and so, after endless windings in the Fir Mountains
(FICHTEL-GEBIRGE), get by Frankfurt into the Rhine at Mainz. Mayn takes
the south end of your shower; Saale takes the north,--or farther east
yonder, shower will roll down into the same grand Elbe River by the
Mulde (over which the Old Dessauer is minded to build a new stone
bridge; Wallenstein and others, as well as Time, have ruined many
bridges there). That is the line of the primeval mountains, and their
ever-flowing rain-courses, in those parts.

At Gera, dim, old Town,--does not your Royal Highness well know the
"Gera Bond (GERAISCHE VERTRAG)"? Duhan: did not forget to inform you of
that? It is the corner-stone of the House of Brandenburg's advancement
in the world. Here, by your august ancestors, the Law of Primogeniture
was settled, and much rubbish was annihilated in the House of
Brandenburg: Eldest Son always to inherit the Electorate unbroken;
after Anspach and Baireuth no more apanages, upon any cause or pretext
whatsoever; and these themselves to lapse irrevocable to the main or
Electoral House, should they ever fall vacant again. Fine fruit of the
decisive sense that was in the Hohenzollerns; of their fine talent for
annihilating rubbish,--which feat, if a man can do it, and keep doing
it, will more than most others accelerate his course in this world. It
was in this dim old Town of Gera, in the Year 1598, by him that had the
twenty-three children, that the "GERA BOND" was brought to parchment.
But indeed it was intrinsically only a renewal, more solemnly
sanctioned, of Albert Achilles's HAUS ORDNUNG (House-Order), done in
1478, above a century earlier.--

But see, we are under way again. His Prussian Majesty rushes forward
without pause; will stop nowhere, except where business demands;
no Majesty of his day travels at such a speed. Orlamunde an hour
hence,--your Royal Highness has heard of Orlamunde and its famed Counts
of a thousand years back, when Kaiser Redbeard was in the world, and the
Junior Hohenzollern, tired of hawking, came down from the Hills to him?
Orlamunde (OrlaMOUTH) is not far off, on our right; and this itself is
the Orla; this pleasant streamlet we are now quitting, which has borne
us company for some time: this too will get into the Saale, and be at
Magdeburg, quite beyond the Dessauer's Bridge, early to-morrow. Ha, here
at last is Saalfeld, Town and Schloss, and the incipient Saal itself:
his Se