d out like shelves sometimes as much as twenty feet from the
straight side, and hung over the way, looking as if they might break off
every moment. I felt glad when we had passed under them. Then as we
ascended higher, we saw pillars of rock separated entirely from the side
and rising a hundred feet in height, with trees growing on their
summits. They stood there gray and limeworn, like the ruins of a Titan
temple.

The path finally led us out into the forest and through the clustering
pine trees, to the summit of the Bastei. An inn has been erected in the
woods and an iron balustrade placed around the rock. Protected by this,
we advanced to the end of the precipice and looked down to the swift
Elbe, more than seven hundred feet below! Opposite through the blue
mists of morning, rose Konigstein, crowned with an impregnable fortress,
and the crags of Lilienstein, with a fine forest around their base,
frowned from the left bank. On both sides were horrible precipices of
gray rock, with rugged trees hanging from the crevices. A hill rising up
from one side of the Bastei, terminates suddenly a short distance from
it, in on abrupt precipice. In the intervening space stand three or four
of those rock-columns, several hundred feet high, with their tops nearly
on a level with the Bastei. A wooden bridge has been made across from
one to the other, over which the traveller passes, looking on the trees
and rocks far below him, to the mountain, where a steep zigzag path
takes him to the Elbe below.

We crossed the Elbe for the fourth time at the foot of the Bastei, and
walked along its right bank towards Konigstein. The injury caused by the
inundation was everywhere apparent. The receding flood had left a
deposit of sand, in many places several feet deep on the rich meadows,
so that the labor of years will be requisite to remove it and restore
the land to an arable condition. Even the farm-houses on the hillside,
some distance from the river, had been reached, and the long grass hung
in the highest branches of the fruit trees. The people wore at work
trying to repair their injuries, but it will fall heavily upon the
poorer classes.

The mountain of Konigstein is twelve hundred feet high. A precipice,
varying from one to three hundred feet in height, runs entirely around
the summit, which is flat, and a mile and a half in circumference. This
has been turned into a fortress, whose natural advantages make it
entirely impregnable. D