74 



INDIANA UNIVERSITY STUDIES 



l^ernese Oberlaiid and to Thuii ; also he passed throiig'li a part 

 of the canton of Zurich and came to a spot where "three posts 

 marked the contiguity of Baden, Zurich and Schatfhausen. " In 

 this vicinity he caught glimpses of a "fortress on a high rock, 

 called Plohentwiel, in Wurtemburg, " ' which Scheffel was later to 

 celebrate in his 'Ekkehard. ' 



Cooper's knowledge of German seems, at least at this time, 

 to have been very limited. On the way to St. Gallen, he notes, 

 p. 152 : ' ' Beggars had been a blot on the scenery for the last day 

 or two ; ... we had paused to rest ourselves, on the side 

 of this mountain, when two or three children came scrambling 

 from a cottage, on the usual errand. The oldest was scarcely 

 two years old. The last was an infant of rare beauty; fair, with 

 the eyes of an angel, and perfectly golden hair. . . . The 

 little cherub plaintively lisped, as she approached, as near as we 

 could understand, 'pity, pity.' " In a foot note Cooper explains: 

 ' ' Greater acquaintance with the German has since shown me that 

 the little thing merely uttered the common entreaty of "bitte, 

 bitte, ' or 'pray do.' " However, in the same volume the novelist 

 speaks of studying the reports of one or two German writers who 

 had traveled in the United States, from which we infer that the 

 novelist had made rapid progress. 



In Volume II we follow Cooper to Lake Luzerne, where he 

 visits the Tell country. Also he stops at Glaris, mentions its 

 cheese, the celebrated Schrabzieher, and conjectures the deriva- 

 tion of its name.^" He next follows the Upper Rhine and ex- 

 plores the Grimse], Furcai, and St. Gotthard passes. Having 

 returned again to Berne, he set out for Italy by way of the Sim- 

 plon Pass. The second volume closes with his arrival in Milan. 



More than half of the third volume is taken up with his expe- 

 riences in Paris. In the latter part we find Cooper and his 

 family on their way to Belgium in an old caleche which had been 

 enlarged to accommodate two servants, one of whom was a 

 Saxon girl hired in Germany. Prom Brussels they journeyed 

 by way of Louvain, Liege, and Spa,, to Aix-la-Chapelle (Aachen). 

 This trip took place in 1832. He comments upon the ancient cathe- 

 dral, Charlemagne's chair, and the painted glass. At Berghem, 



1" The name, so far as my knowledge extends is compounded of 'Ziegen' (goats) 

 and some local word that means either plant, or the name of a plant. The latter, 

 however, is purely oonjeetiire 'Busch' is shrub, in derman, but 'schrab' sounds so 

 near it. that I dare say it is some obsolete word of the same signllfication, although 

 it is no more than fair to repeat to you that this is sheer conjecture." ( Vol. II. 

 p. 47. ) 



