218 



GERMANY, 



one. But standing upon the western scarpments of the Jura, we look down into 

 smiling valleys, wending their way to the INTeckar, and ahounding in wealthy 

 villages, homesteads, and oichards. Bold masses of whitish rock project towards 

 the valley of the Neckar, almost separated from the plateau by the erosive action 

 of water. One of these crags is occupied by the castle of Hohenzollern (2,800 



Fig. 125 — Urach and H(ihex-Urack. 

 Scale 1 : 81.000. 







feet), the ancestral home of the reigning family of Prussiaand Germany ; another 

 bore upon its summit the proud castle of the Hohenstaufen (2,240 feet). 



The Swabian Jura is quite as cavernous as that of France, and the bones of 

 bears and other animals now extinct have been found in its recesses. Narrow 

 gorges or clefts, which divide the plateau into distinct sections, abound. The 

 gorge of the Brigach, one of the head-streams of the Danube, thus cuts in two 

 the plateau of the Baar. The gorge of the Fils, an affluent of the Neckar, 



