metimes, when they opened a little more, the mountains below us to the
east and the adjoining plains, as far as Magdeburg. It was like looking
on the earth from another planet, or from some point in the air which
had no connection, with it; our station was completely surrounded by
clouds, rolling in great masses around us, now and then giving glimpses
through their openings of the blue plains, dotted with cities and
villages, far below. At one time when they were tolerably well
separated, I ascended the tower, fifty feet high, standing near the
Brocken House. The view on three sides was quite clear, and I can easily
imagine what a magnificent prospect it must be in fine weather. The
Brocken is only about four thousand feet high, nearly the same as the
loftiest peak of the Catskill, but being the highest mountain in
Northern Germany, it commands a more extensive prospect. Imagine a
circle described with a radius of a hundred miles, comprising thirty
cities, two or three hundred villages and one whole mountain district!
We could see Brunswick and Magdeburg, and beyond them the great plain
which extends to the North Sea in one direction and to Berlin in the
other, while directly below us lay the dark mountains of the Hartz, with
little villages in their sequestered valleys. It was but a few moments I
could look on this scene--in an instant the clouds swept together again
and completely hid it. In accordance with a custom of the mountain, one
of the girls made me a "Brocken nosegay," of heather, lichens and moss.
I gave her a few pfennings and stowed it away carefully in a corner of
my knapsack.

I now began descending the east side, by a good road over fields of bare
rock and through large forests of pine. Two or three bare brown peaks
rose opposite with an air of the wildest sublimity, and in many places
through the forest towered lofty crags. This is the way by which Goethe
brings Faust up the Brocken, and the scenery is graphically described in
that part of the poem. At the foot of the mountain is the little village
of Schiercke, the highest in the Hartz. Here I took a narrow path
through the woods, and after following a tediously long road over the
hills, reached Elbingerode, where I spent the night, and left the next
morning for Blankenburg. I happened to take the wrong road, however, and
went through Rubeland, a little village in the valley of the Bode. There
are many iron works here, and two celebrated caves, called