44 Professor Hoffman on Mountain-Chains. 



the falls at Schaffhausen, and the rapids at Laufenburg on the 

 southern edge of the Black Forest. At Bale it has left this 

 mountainous wall behind it, and now bends its course between 

 two parallel mountain-ranges, which accompany it quite ac- 

 cording to the old ideas on the subject ; these are on the one 

 side the Black Forest and the Odenwald, and on the other the 

 Vosges and the Hardt. Suddenly, however, this broad valley 

 is blocked up by an immense barrier at Bingen and Mayence, 

 for the slate mountains of the lower Rhine cross the course of 

 the river by the Taimus and Hundsriick mountains, which form 

 a steep wall of 2000 feet in height. The mighty stream enters 

 a narrow rocky gateway at Bingen ; and the margins of the; 

 moimtain mass which has been broken through and torn 

 asunder to its very base, accompany it onwards, the pheno- 

 menon being continued for a space of between fifty and sixty 

 English miles till near the town of Bonn. There the moun- 

 tains gradually diminish in height, or retire, and the river 

 then pursues its uninterrupted course through the plain, pro- 

 bably burdened with the debris which it has carried away from 

 the mountains. Nowhere can the arrangement of the water- 

 sheds, and the inequalities of the land, be more opposed to the 

 old view than here ; for the stream receives the numerous 

 tributaries from the borders of the mountains, and these tri- 

 butaries floAv into their interior. How much the opposite 

 would the course of the mountains be, to what we observe in 

 nature, were we to form our idea of them from the arrange- 

 ment of the net of rivers given on the map. 



It is also well worthy of attention, that, even in the lower 

 parts of Germany, where the inequalities of the surface ai'e 

 not so well marked, the x-ivers have broken through the highest 

 portions of the ridges. This is the case with the Oder below 

 Frankfort, and the Elbe near Hitzacker. We thus perceive, 

 that everywhere the same causes have been in operation, and 

 the same effects have been produced. 



