232 FIRST JOURNEY IN EUROPE. (1839, 
that I could appreciate the beauty of its situation, and 
I felt a momentary regret that I had not stayed a day 
longer and visited Berchtesgaden. These fine moun- 
tains and those of the Tyrol (the mure western portion 
of the same chain) were in full view during the whole 
journey, fillmg the southern horizon, while we jour- 
neyed through a rather level country; for the whole 
of Bavaria south of the Danube is a great plain, 
stretching from that river to these mountains that 
skirt its southern border. It is an inclined plain, 
since Munich, though in a perfectly flat region, is 
about sixteen hundred feet above the level of the sea. 
We crossed the frontier in an hour after we started, 
where our baggage was slightly and very civilly ex- 
amined, and our passports viséd by the Bavarian 
police. We passed two pretty lakes, but no place of 
interest except Wasserburg, situated in a picturesque 
dell on the river Inn. For companions I had a Dane, 
who spoke a little English surprisingly well, and was 
very agreeable ; a German, who spoke a little French ; 
and a Frenchman, who had come up the Danube from 
Constantinople, and who tired us all with the continual 
clack of his very disagreeable voice. I took up my 
abode at the Schwarzer Adler, a very comfortable 
and quite cheap hotel; slept pretty well; rose early 
this morning to take a look at the town, which 
within these last twenty years has become a mag- 
nificent capital; saw many of the public buildings, — 
that is, their exterior, — churches, and squares ; went 
to the office of the police and obtained the required 
permission de séjour; and then went to the Royal 
Cabinet to find Martius, for whom I had three letters 
of introduction. He is a small man, not so tall as I, 
quite thin, but rather good-looking, apparently fifty 
