les ago, round to northeastward again or northward altogether, which
he gets to be at Merseburg, a dozen farther down. Right across from
Weissenfels, lapped in this crook of the Saale, or washed by it on south
side and on east, rises, with extreme laziness, a dull circular lump of
country, six or eight miles in diameter; with Rossbach and half a dozen
other scraggy sleepy Hamlets scattered on it;--which, till the morning
of Saturday, 5th November, 1757, had not been notable to any visitor.
The topmost point or points, for there are two (not discoverable except
by tradition and guess), the country people do call Hills, JANUS-HUGEL,
POLZEN-HUGEL--Hill sensible to wagon-horses in those bad loose tracks of
sandy mud, but unimpressive on the Tourist, who has to admit that there
seldom was so flat a Hill. Rising, let us guess, forty yards in
the three or four miles it has had. Might be called a perceptibly
pot-bellied plain, with more propriety; flat country, slightly puffed
up;--in shape not steeper than the mould of an immense tea-saucer would
be. Tea-saucer 6 miles in diameter, 100 feet in depth, and of irregular
contour, which indeed will sufficiently represent it to the reader's
mind.

Saale, at four or five miles distance, bounds this scraggy lump on the
east and on the south. Westward and northward, springing about Mucheln
on each hand, and setting off to right and to left Saale-ward, are what
we take to be two brooks; at least are two hollows: and behind these,
the country rises higher; undulating still on lazy terms, but now
painted azure by the distance, not unpleasant to behold, with its litter
all lapped out of sight, and its poor brooks tinkling forward (as we
judge) into the Saale, Merseburg way, or reverse-wise into the Unstrut,
the last big branch of Saale. Southward from our Janus Height, eight or
nine miles off, may be seen some vestige of Freiburg; steeple or gilt
weathercock faintly visible, on the Unstrut yonder;--which I take to
be Soubise's bread-basket at present. And farther off, and opposite the
MOUTH of the Unstrut, well across the Saale, lies another namable Town
(visible in clear weather, as a smoke-cloud at certain hours, about
meal-time, when the kettles are on boil), the Town of Naumburg,--one of
several German Naumburgs,--the Naumburg of Gustaf Adolf; where his slain
body lay, on the night of Lutzen Battle, with his poor Queen and
others weeping over it. Naumburg is on the other side of Saale,