262 FOREIGN TRA VEL CHAI>. vm 



you a visit during my absence. Gossips have been 

 exaggerating my illness, and I know that, both on my 

 own authority and that of the doctor, you will do me 

 the friendly turn to give a flat, blunt, sharp, plain, 

 broad, profound, high, and indignant denial to any 

 statement that I am seriously ill. I am even now so 

 wonderfully better that I can do a good hard day's 

 work at the office, albeit I am tired at night, and 

 therefore to set me up alike by day and by night, an 

 entire cessation for a while is needed.' 



Nearly two months were spent in Bonn, and of 

 this sojourn Ramsay used always to talk with much 

 enthusiasm. He loved the great river, and delighted 

 to sit quietly smoking and watching the ' breast of 

 waters' as it swelled beneath him. He made some 

 pleasant friends, among whom he specially counted 

 Von Dechen, the venerable Noggerath, and young 

 Ferdinand Zirkel. Professor Zirkel has sent me a 

 letter with his reminiscences of Ramsay, which is here 

 inserted : 



My first meeting with the never-to-be-forgotten Ramsay was in 

 the spring of 1860, in Bonn, so far as I remember, towards the end 

 of April or beginning of May. One day my fatherly patron and 

 official chief, Von Dechen, sent for me and told me that an English 

 geologist, a man of great importance, had come to Bonn with his 

 wife, to spend some time there for the sake of his health, and in order to 

 make some geological excursions in the neighbourhood. As Dechen 

 himself had not time, I was asked to accompany and guide the 

 stranger in these rambles. No request could have been more agree- 

 able to me. Although I was then only twenty-two years of age, yet 

 I knew the nearer and farther environs of my native town as well 

 as anybody. I was at that time a pupil of the Prussian State- 

 Mining Institute. 



So I waited on Ramsay, who was staying at ErmekeiPs Grand 

 Hotel Royal on the Rhine, and then began a series of blissful days. 

 Sometimes for the whole day, sometimes in the afternoon only, we 

 rambled in the Siebengebirge, to the Roderberg, to the Laacher See, 

 to the Devonian Eifel-limestone at Bensberg, and many other places. 



