CHAPTER V. 



THE UPPER DANUBE AND THE MAIN. 

 (Bavaria and Danubian Wlrttembekg.) 



General Aspects. — Mountains. 



F all the states of Germany, Bavaria, excluding therefrom the Trans- 

 Rhenan Palatinate, has its boundaries drawn most in accordance 

 with natural features. The country presents itself as a vast quad- 

 rangle, bounded on the south by the limestone Alps of the Algau, 

 Tyrol, and Salzburg ; on the east by the Bohemian Forest ; on the 

 north by the Thuringian Forest ; and in the west by the Franconian and Swabian 

 Jura. The rivers, it is true, partly belong to the basin of the Danube, and partly 

 to that of the Rhine, but the passage from one basin to the other presents no 

 obstacles whatever. This geographical unity has greatly promoted the political con- 

 stitution of Bavaria. It has kept alive, too, a " particularist " Bavarian patriotism, 

 old customs, and traditions. There was a time when politicians dreamed of giving 

 to Bavaria a position analogous to that of Prussia and Austria, but that time is 

 past, and Bavaria has become a province, though a very important one, of the new 

 German Empire.* 



Austria took care at the Congress of Vienna to secure possession of all the 

 great passes over the Alps, and not even the rivers which discharge themselves 

 into the Danube above Passau were wholly assigned to Bavaria. Austria holds 

 not only the whole of the valley of the Inn and Vorarlberg, but also the upper 

 valleys of the Lech and Isar. The Fern Pass (4,025 feet), through which runs 

 the old high-road from Augsburg to Innsbruck and Italy, lies wholly within 

 Austrian territory. Bavaria, however, may nevertheless boast of possessing some 

 veritable Alps, with glaciers, perennial snows, lakes, and succeeding zones of 

 vegetation. Standing upon the Hohe Peissenberg (3,190 feet), an isolated cone 



Bavaria to the east of the Ehine . 

 Palatinate ..... 



Area. Population. 



Sq. Miles. 1867. 1875. 



'^6,999 4,198,355 4,381,136 



2,292 626,066 641,254 



Inliab. to 



Sq. Mile. 



162 



280 



Total 



29,291 



4,824,421 



5,022,390 



172 



