MANNERS AND CUSTOMS. 



473 



rocky roads impassable to anybut 

 pedestrians, give an air of seques- 

 tered wildness to the country 

 which adds much to its interest. 

 The whole scene for thirty miles 

 each way has the air of a chaos 

 of hills thrown one against an- 

 other in picturesque irregularity. 

 The valleys between them are 

 deep and romantic — dotted with 

 spires and smoking villages whose 

 pastures and orchards are watered 

 by streams from the mountains 

 which find a rambling passage 

 through the valleys towards the 

 Hhine. 



The soil no longer a meagre 

 sand, is infinitely richer than that 

 of the plains below the moun- 

 tainous district — and it is culti- 

 vated with a proportionate care. 

 The small farms of from tea to 

 fifty acres, are tilled by the pea- 

 sants to whom they belong. 

 Their farming establishment con- 

 sists of a small cottage, the exte- 

 rior better and cleaner than the 

 interior, a hovel used for a barn, 

 a home-built waggon, and two or 

 three small fawn-coloured cows, 

 which supply the dairy, and do 

 the work of horses. The light 

 waggons drawn by thesehandsome 

 little animals, climbing the sides 

 of the hills, driven by the peasant 

 in his cocked hat and blue jerkin, 

 pleasingly enliven the landscape. 

 The cows and oxen draw by the 

 horns and forehead, a mode which 

 the Germans assert is easier than 

 drawing on the shoulder. 



In spite of these Arcadian 

 scenes and this Arcadian mode 

 of life, I am sorry to say my 

 friends the Odenwalders are not 

 renowned for a romantic virtue. 

 Half the crimes of the Grand 

 Duchy arc said to be committed 



by them; and the Gens d'armes 

 generally make their first searches 

 in their wild woods and valleys. 

 But their country affords so ex- 

 cellent a shelter, that they have 

 probably gained credit for fur- 

 nishing some delinquents whom 

 they only concealed. 



At two long leagues from Hep- 

 penheira we descended to a small 

 village called Furth — Its dirty 

 street watered by the little river 

 Weschnitz, which rises on one of 

 the highest points in the Oden- 

 wald, and whose name the anti- 

 quaries rather circuitously derive 

 from a God Visucius, to whom 

 an inscribed stone was erected 

 near its source. We entered 

 here the first little Wirth's Haus, 

 (a low inn,) denoted by the usual 

 withered bush over the door. 

 The kitchen, a black dirty room, 

 with a stove in one corner — the 

 floor caked with dirt — was crowd- 

 ed with peasants lounging over 

 their chioppine (pint) of sour 

 Berg-strasse wine. Beer is very- 

 bad, and little drank in these 

 wine districts. Those, who cannot 

 afford grape wine, drink, in snxa- 

 mer, apjel wein, (apple wine,) a 

 flat muddy cider; and in winter 

 a frequent schnapps (dram) of a 

 cheap sort of gin. To this feeble 

 and deleterious beverage, and the 

 quantities of sour black bread 

 which they devour, the sallow 

 unhealthy looks of the German 

 peasants are perhaps, in some 

 degree, to be attributed. You 

 constantly see stout square-built 

 fellows, equal to any labour, with 

 pale cheeks, dim eyes, and all the 

 air of invalids. The sun, which 

 in the sandy fields is extremely 

 powerful, rarely gives men or 

 women the ruddy brown, which 



seems 



