here we passed the night, the people
told us of a much nearer and more beautiful road, passing through the
Zabergau, a region fumed for its fertility and pastoral beauty. At the
inn we were charged higher than usual for a bed, so that we had but
thirteen kreutzers to start with in the morning. Our fare that day was a
little bread and water; we walked steadily on, but owing to the wet
roads, made only thirty miles.

A more delightful region than the Zabergau I have seldom passed through.
The fields were full of rich, heavy grain, and the trees had a
luxuriance of foliage that reminded me of the vale of the Jed, in
Scotland. Without a single hedge or fence, stood the long sweep of
hills, covered with waving fields of grain, except where they were steep
and rocky, and the vineyard terraces rose one above another. Sometimes a
fine old forest grew along the summit, like a mane waving back from the
curved neck of a steed, and white villages lay coiled in the valleys
between. A line of blue mountains always closed the vista, on looking
down one of these long valleys; occasionally a ruined castle with donjon
tower, was seen on a mountain at the side, making the picture complete.
As we lay sometimes on the hillside and looked on one of those sweet
vales, we were astonished at its Arcadian beauty. The meadows were as
smooth as a mirror, and there seemed to be scarcely a grass-blade out of
place. The streams wound through ("_snaked_ themselves through," is the
German expression,) with a subdued ripple, as if they feared to displace
a pebble, and the great ash trees which stood here and there, had lined
each of their leaves as carefully with silver and turned them as
gracefully to the wind, us if they were making their toilettes for the
gala-day of nature.

That evening brought us into the dominions of Baden, within five hours'
walk of Heidelberg. At the humblest inn in an humble village, we found
a bed which we could barely pay for, leaving a kreutzer or two for
breakfast. Soon after starting the next morning, the distant Kaiserstuhl
suddenly emerged from the mist, with the high tower on its summit, where
nearly ten months before, we sat and looked at the summits of the Vosges
in France, with all the excitement one feels on entering a foreign land.
_Now_, the scenery around that same Kaiserstuhl was nearly as familiar
to us as that of our own homes. Entering the hills again, we knew by the
blue mountains of the Odenwald, that we