break through Mountain-Chains. 43 



twixt them to a height of 8000 feet in the lofty summit of the 

 Watzmann. 



No country in Europe, so far as we know, presents so many 

 instances of this phenomenon as Spam. Ritter remarks {Erd- 

 kunde^ vol. i. p. 70, 2cl edition), that, on this account, and he- 

 cause the division of the country into provinces is founded on 

 the ^^'ater-sheds, our maps generally convey the most erroneous 

 idea of the direction of the mountain-chains ; for the water- 

 sheds occur chiefly on plateaus, from which run branches of 

 mountains. 



Germany exhibits many cases of this most important hydro- 

 graphical feature. The Erzgehirge is cut by the Elbe right 

 across its line of direction, where it is connected with the 

 Riesengebirge by the hills of Upper Lusatia (Ober-Lausitz), 

 viz. between Tetschen and the neighbourhood of Pirna, or at 

 that portion of the river which traverses the chief part of the 

 beautiful rocky landscape generally known by the name of the 

 Saxon Switzerland. The Weser, ere it reaches the great 

 plain, cuts across a range of hills (the Wiehengebirge ) from 600 

 to 800 feet in height, at the Porta Westphalica, near Minden ; 

 and the Ems, on a smaller scale, traverses the continuation of 

 one of these chains of hills at Rheine. Nowhere, in Northern 

 Germany, is there a more instructive instance of the breaking- 

 through a mountain-chain, than in the rocky gorge of the 

 Ross-trappe, through which the river Bode quits the northern 

 edge of the Hartz Mountains. 



But no German river is so remarkable for strilving and re- 

 peated examples of this feature as the Rhine.* Where it 

 leaves the Alps, it cuts through them, by one of the deepest 

 and narrowest gorges that they presentj viz. the Schamser 

 Thai, from Spliigqfi downwards, and its continuation to the 

 vicinity of Ilohcnembs. It then crosses the wide valley be- 

 tween the Alps and Jura, expanding itself in the basin of the 

 Lake of Constance, but next penetrates the opposite wall of 

 the .Tura ; and the most considerable ridges are indicated by 



* iScc Profusfior Wciss's paper, " Ubt-r diu Rhoiu-Durclibruclio;" in the 

 Zcittchr'ift far die iieuette Geichichlc, kSlaats-wid Volkcrkiinde, Berlin, April 1814^ 

 p. 3G3, 



