236 



The Plant World. 



he who has not eaten heather honey has yet a joy in store for 

 him! — and at length passes Manhorn, a tiny hamlet with but a 

 half-dozen red-roofed houses, seen across bright meadow among 

 darker trees. Beyond the farms of Manhorn was little to see but 

 far-stretching heather. Imagine a rolling plain, stretching 

 through blue haze to a still bluer horizon, the latter partly de- 

 marked by dim, dark forests; all under a blue sky with a few 

 scattered cloud-puffs; the ground densely covered with waving 

 brown heather; here and there, sometimes singly, sometimes in 

 groups, dark, mysterious junipers rising from the brown carpet, 

 with forms low and rounded, or tall and columnar, or again 

 fantastically deformed by the wind; and through this plain a 

 winding strip of golden sand which marks the road we are to 

 travel. Somewhat in this way does the open heath leave its 

 i mpression -on our mind. The tall, dark, sentinel-like junipers 

 (the German name for them is Wacholder) should never be for- 

 gotten. Now and then a belated Calluna plant was still in bloom , 

 everywhere the withered capsules told of the past glory of the 

 bygone summer. 



The map showed "Hun's Graves" not over-far to the south- 

 west, and a detour was made to visit these. The country falls 

 off to a lower level — some ancient glacial basin, no doubt — and 

 the yellow sand of the wheel tracks becomes deep upon the 

 slope. At length a dark forest-mass rose in the plain, and 

 within it, several miles from the nearest habitation, were found 

 the prehistoric graves. These had, of course, been long since 

 opened and were now quite free to the curious prowler. They 

 are somewhat irregularly oblong inclosures, wider than a man's 

 height and some twice or thrice as long, formed by upright, 

 closely placed boulders, and covered with one or more enormous 

 flattish stones. It must have been truly a giant's work to build 

 them! In truth, they are not Hun's graves at all, on the con- 

 trary were probably already standing in the open heath, gray and 

 weathered and their story long since forgotten, at the time when 

 the first Huns came ravaging and burning hither. All that may be 

 surely said is that they are the relics of a piehistoric people. 

 Now they are much prized and wondered at, talked of by the 

 inhabitants, and often visited for a day's outing. The area 

 about them is kept as a natural forest park, protected by the 

 usual explanatory and threatening placards. 



