264 FOREIGN TRA VEL CHAP, vm 



The following portion of a letter to Mrs. Cook- 

 man (4th July) from Bertrich gives a picture of 

 how the time passed there. ' Having stayed seven 

 weeks at Bonn, and excursed and fished, we steamed 

 up the Rhine to Coblenz, slept one night there, and 

 next morning steamed up the Moselle to Alf, where 

 we remained a fortnight, walking and idling, and 

 fishing again. I assure you I can throw a fly as 

 prettily as need be. But who shall describe the 

 glories of the Moselle with its unutterably tortuous 

 windings, its vineyards, its quaintly -gabled towns, 

 and all its castles, so stately in decay ! I am going 

 to buy one for 50 or 100 thalers (7 : IDS. or ^15), 

 and in memory of my late illness, take my title from 

 it Baron Beilstein. 



' Bertrich is a pretty little village, with two or 

 three hotels, baths, and gardens with music in them 

 twice a day. Gaiety there is none, but peace and 

 quiet and a billiard table. The village is set in a 

 deep valley, and three extinct volcanoes crown the 

 tableland above, for hills proper there are none. I 

 have been on foot with a Dutchman (whom I lamed) all 

 over the Eifel, and have seen lots of extinct volcanoes 

 most interesting. The structure of the country, its 

 physical geography in fact, is most curious a great 

 tableland, about 1200 feet high, through which the 

 Moselle and other rivers run in deep valleys. On 

 this tableland are perched old volcanoes of Miocene 

 (that is, of Middle Tertiary) age. The valleys are 

 of older date than the volcanoes, for sometimes you 

 see a lava-stream that has run from the mouth of the 

 craters into the valley below. The Devonian strata 

 of the tableland are awfully disturbed, not by the 

 volcanoes, but by far older forces. It was a great 



