of sunny
pasture between the ascending forests, to the very summits of the lower
heights and the saddles between them, was something quite new in my
experience.

Turning around the point of Voeglisegg, we made for Trogen, one of the
two capitals of Outer-Rhoden, which lay before us, across the head of
the deep and wild St. Martin's Tobel. (_Tobel_ is an Appenzell word,
corresponding precisely to the _gulch_ of California.) My postilion
mounted, and the breathed horse trotted merrily along the winding level.
One stately house after another, with a clump of fruit-trees on the
sheltered side, and a row of blooming hyacinths and wall-flowers on the
balcony, passed by on either side. The people we met were sunburnt and
ugly, but there was a rough air of self-reliance about them, and they
gave me a hearty "God greet you!" one and all. Just before reaching
Trogen, the postilion pointed to an old, black, tottering platform of
masonry, rising out of a green slope of turf on the right. The grass
around it seemed ranker than elsewhere.

This was the place of execution, where capital criminals are still
beheaded with the sword, in the sight of the people. The postilion gave
me an account, with all the horrible details, of the last execution,
only three years ago,--how the murderer would not confess until he was
brought out of prison to hear the bells tolling for his victim's
funeral,--how thereupon he was sentenced, and--but I will not relate
further. I have always considered the death penalty a matter of policy
rather than principle; but the sight of that blood-stained platform, the
blood-fed weeds around it, and the vision of the headsman, in his red
mantle, looking down upon the bared neck stretched upon the block, gave
me more horror of the custom than all the books and speeches which have
been said and written against it.

At Trogen I stopped at the principal inn, two centuries old, the quaint
front painted in fresco, the interior neat and fresh as a new toy,--a
very gem of a house! The floor upon which I entered from the street was
paved with flat stones; a solid wooden staircase, dark with age, led to
the guests' room in the second story. One side of this room was given up
to the windows, and there was a charming hexagonal oriel in the corner.
The low ceiling was of wood, in panels, the stove a massive tower, faced
with porcelain tiles, the floor polished nearly into whiteness, and all
the doors, cupboards, and tables, m