216 SIR WILLIAM RAMSAY 



great iron and steel works of Messrs. John Cockerel, and 

 through his influence Ramsay saw over this wonderful 

 factory, an experience which he never forgot. 



After that Bonn, Heidelberg and Stuttgart were 

 visited, and all new arrangements and apparatus taken 

 note of for future use. The summer of 1881 was very 

 wet, and during the whole of the tour there were only 

 about ten days of fine weather. These fell luckily at 

 the time of a small walking tour in the Eiffel, which 

 Ramsay had once visited before and wanted to explore 

 more thoroughly. It must be owned that it was a 

 walking tour by courtesy only, for the journeys were 

 for the most part made by all sorts of conveyances, 

 and the walking was done in the surroundings of the 

 various halts. The means of locomotion were rather 

 peculiar. One day (it was wet) the local butcher's 

 " wagen " was hired. It turned out to be one of the long 

 German carts with two boards as a floor and two long 

 things like ladders as sides, and, of course, not a vestige 

 of a spring. Another day appeared a sumptous and evil- 

 smelling four-wheeled cab, evidently the state chariot of 

 the neighbourhood. The stopping places were also varied 

 and full of interest. In one place the little inn was an 

 old watch-tower, and all the rooms were round or the 

 segments of a circle. All were out of the common. 

 The last halt before getting back to much-needed lug- 

 gage and change of raiment was, as ill-luck would have 

 it, at the most select and conventional hotel in a most 

 select and conventional little German watering place, 



