03.14. The Rhine
Chapter 14 The Rhine. A Scene in Belgium -- Cologne -- The Rhine -- The Vineyards -- The Ruins of Castles -- The Legends -- Col. Somebody -- Bingen on the Rhine -- A Moonlight Scene on the Rhine.
I left Paris on the 8 o’clock morning train for Cologne, on the Rhine. In this journey you pass through the breadth of the kingdom of Belgium. A hard-worked looking people meet the gaze whenever and wherever you look. We ran for miles on the banks of the river Meuse. Mountainous hills descend at some places very steeply to the river’s edge. Running up the hill-sides were cultivated farms, divided into squares by hedges. The unconscious arrangement gave to these farms the appearance of pictures painted in living colors, set up in frames and leaned against the walls of the mountains. What a wonderful picture gallery that river valley was for awhile! From Aix-la-Chapelle to Cologne, all in Prussian territory, the country was one waving mass of golden grain, with gleaners in the field, and loaded wagons moving along the tree-skirted roads, with villages amid spires in the distance, and in the remote distance ranges of purple hills shutting in the immense plain.
We arrived at Cologne at or near 7 o’clock in the evening. There are two things to be done in this city that sits on the western bank of the river Rhine. One is to get a bottle of cologne, not because that it is especially needed at this place, but because here is the fountain-head of that famous perfume, Another thing to be done is to visit the great cathedral. It is a gothic structure, and by its size and beauty deeply impressed me. As I entered the building at 8 o’clock in the evening, I found the vast space within almost filled with a worshiping throng. A dim, weird light from a few lights struggled with the shadows of the temple; the great columns of stone lifted themselves up until they were fairly lost in the darkness of the lofty ceiling; a great crowd of people stood or knelt all about the building, every eye being on the priest who was literally enveloped in a cloud of incense arising from the altar; the music came from an unknown, undiscovered spot. It was from above, among the stone pillar s; but whether from the chancel, or from the right transept or the left, or from the end of the nave, it was impossible to tell. How the Roman Church calculates upon the effect of all these things -- the gleaming row of candles, the mysterious bell, the clouds of incense, the majestic pillared roof, the architectural magnificence, the distant music from above; the flitting, bowing, white-robed figures in the altar, and, over all, the dim, mystic light peculiar to the cathedral! It was a scene for a painter. Not all of the Rhine is beautiful; but that portion which lies between Bonn and Bingen constitutes the part that has figured most in song, poem, fiction, and book of travel. Taking the steamer at Cologne, and going up as far as Mayence, over an hundred and twenty miles away, you see it all. I was reluctant at the beginning of the voyage to yield the claims of the Hudson River; but before the journey was completed I had given the palm to the Rhine. The advantage of the latter is in the length of the mountain panorama, and in the castle ruins that crown the crags all along. Then there is such a delightful combination of the ancient and the modern, of wild nature and nature tamed. The harvests wave in the sunny fields, the sail gleams on the river, the vineyards clothe the mountain-side, and the ruined castle sits on the jutting crag. Industry leans on its reapinghook in the field, and History looks down upon you from the beetling rocks of the mountains that tower above you. Nature has three vails that she is fond of using, and which she employs with marked effect on the Rhine. She has a silver vail for the valley, a purple one for the hills, and a deep blue one for the mountains.
I was much impressed with the old castles. Their strength and beauty of situation would strike the most careless observer. Some are half way down between the crest of the mountain and the edge of the river; others are perched upon the highest point, and stand with outline against the sky, noticeable for miles down the stream. The wonder was, how they could ever be taken by any kind of military assault. The castle of Drachenfels has been immortalized by an English pen. I cannot refrain from quoting the verse that appears in "Childe Harold:"
"The castled crag of Drachenfels Frowns o’er the wide and winding Rhine, Whose breast of waters broadly swells Between the banks which bear the vine, And hills all rich with blossom’d trees, And fields which promise corn and wine; And scattered cities crowning these, Whose fair white walls along them shine, Have showed a scene which I should see With double joy, wert thou with me." At Coblentz the "Blue Moselle" empties into the Rhine. It is a river that has a charming song composed in its praise. The strains that I had heard as a boy were sounding in memory the whole evening. Just opposite Coblentz is the fortified heights of Ehrenbreitstein, called the Gibraltar of Northern Europe. From the waves of the river to the topmost rocks it is a mass of walls and towers and battery-crowned plateaus. It is said that a most exquisite view of the country is to be had from the summit of the castle. Traveling on a short schedule, I could not stop, though my eye and heart hungered to do so. The vineyards constitute a most remarkable feature of this beautiful river. The slopes of the hills and the sides of the mountains are literally covered with them. In some places the mountain declivity is so sharp that it has to be terraced all the way down. At one point I counted twenty-eight or thirty distinct terraces. It is easy to imagine what a pleasing spectacle it presents. The legends of the Rhine are almost as numerous as its vineyards. A book containing a number was offered for sale on the boat; but I had indulged sufficiently in that lore as a boy, and I also had a few in condensed form in one of the books I had with me. I give, in a few brief words, one of them. The sentences in parenthesis are my own, with the desire to throw additional light on the authentic and interesting record. A certain lord, living in yonder castle to the right, had a daughter. (Oh, these daughters!) And she was lovely. (Of course.) About this time there came along a young wandering knight. (A kind of medieval tramp.) He fell in love with the daughter, and she with him. (All this was a foregone conclusion.) After a few months of lover-like happiness he went off to fight the Moors in Spain. (All of which was wrong. What had the Moors done to him?) In one of the battles he was wounded, and being left on the battle-field, was thought to be dead; and such a report came to the ears of the lovely daughter. At once she was plunged into despair, and immediately took the vail and became a nun. (This was extremely precipitate; she should have waited until the arrival of the evening mail.) The young wandering knight was not killed, as reported, but wounded. (If he had been a settled, industrious landholder in the neighborhood, he would have died but, being a kind of military tramp, he recovers.) Hastening back fr om the gory field, he finds, to his consternation and grief, that his lady love had taken the irrevocable vow of the nunnery; whereupon he spends the rest of his days leaning on and over the castle parapets of stone, looking down upon the convent that contained his lost treasure. (This morbid, unhealthy, useless piece of inactivity convinces me that had this young man lived in the present century, he would have been addicted to playing accompaniments on the piano, and writing bad poetry of a sentimental character.) Finally the young knight died. (Of what complaint is not mentioned in the legend; but I suspect that he caught cold sitting so long on the stones.) And now the young people rave over the one arch of the castle that is left. What mental conclusions they draw I leave to each reader to imagine; but the moral I draw from the legend is that you never know what young people are going to do.
Still farther up there is another ruined castle where formerly dwelt seven lovely sisters.
(This being four or five hundred years ago, there is no possible way of disproving the fact that all the sisters were lovely.) Having very large estates in addition to their beauty, they had quite a number of suitors. (Comment here is superfluous.) But these sisters did not desire to marry.
(Perhaps they saw the men were after their land and money.) Anyhow, when compulsion was brought to bear upon these seven females in regard to matrimony, the legend relates that they drowned themselves in the river Rhine. (I have seen women who felt like drowning themselves for having married, but none affected like these Rhinish sisters.) The legend goes on to say that forthwith there came up above the surface of the river seven rocks, into which form the rocky-hearted sisters were transformed. (On reflection, this was not such a change after all.
Nevertheless, it was a warning to other females who, since that time, have bee n more tractable.
Think of it! -- seven sisters kill themselves rather than get married. Their race is perished!) In the journey up the Rhine there are occasions when, through the stoppage of the boat a few minutes, or from some features of the landscape being less striking, the passengers take note of each other, and exchange hasty salutations and a few words of pleasant remark. At one of these times I was introduced to a Col. Somebody, whose name I forgot in the multitude of famous people who are out in force this year. This colonel was Lincoln’s law partner, and wrote a life of the dead President. He quite enchained me with scraps of Lincoln’s early history, and with the account of the capture and death of Booth, his murderer.
Bingen is reached about half-past seven in the evening. It lies on the west bank of the Rhine, at the foot of lofty vineyard clothed hills. Directly across the river the mountain-side is terraced and vine-clothed down to the water’s edge. It is a lovely place, and recalled to me with deeper appreciation the song by Mrs. Norton, of "Sweet Bingen-on-the-Rhine.
After passing Bingen the mountains seemed to become weary with having entertained us so long; and so, with graceful poise of their beautiful forms, they swept off to the right and left for a distance of several miles, and stood looking back at us through their dark blue vails, and over their rounded, sloping shoulders. Thus coquettishly left, we pursued our way between level shorelines that remind me greatly of the Mississippi. Then lights began to twinkle here and there on the river from fishing-boats, and the stars came out overhead, and the trees stretched in spectral lines on the shore, and then the moon rose in cloudless beauty and poured a flood of liquid light on the distant mountains and fields and the broad flood of the river. And then a little while after the lights of the city of Mayence came into view before us, and the beautiful dream-like trip on the Rhine was at an end.
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