IX A German First of September 477 



but with two or more deep ravine-like valleys inter- 

 vening, merely marked by a slight furrow trending 

 towards the Rhine, or by the tops of the lofty 

 beeches that grew on their sides. 



The harvest was all in, so there was nothing 

 to relieve the monotony of our walk. Here and 

 there an aged wrinkled crone, of some thirty -five 

 or thereabouts, might be seen pottering about 

 some pet patch of turnips or kohlrabi ; but there 

 v/ere no men ; they were all — where the deuce 

 were they ? and where are they always in that 

 part of the world ? One never sees them at work 

 in the fields after ploughing is over, and not always 

 then. One might as well look for a young woman, 

 nothing female being ever seen between thirteen 

 and thirty, which is decidedly an ancient age in 

 those agricultural districts. 



No cheerful farmhouse, with its walls covered 

 with roses, and its 'missus's' well-kept emerald - 

 turfed flower-garden before the door ; no sparkling 

 alder-shadowed brook, with the cows standing mid- 

 leg in the clear water, enjoying the cool green shade, 

 with the swallows whisking and dipping about them ; 

 no farm-boys taking their sleek brown horses out to 

 the half-ploughed stubbles ; nothing, — not a sound, not 

 a sight, — bird, beast, or tree — to put one in mind 

 of an English farming country ; all flat, bare, and 

 brown. Let new-fashioned farmers grumble as they 

 like about hedgerows and hedge-timber ; the want 

 of them makes a country look terribly dreary. 



