138 
THE CULTIVATOR. 
richly, the day we were able to give it. The beauty of 
the park, near which 
“ There was a sound of revelry by night, 
And Belgium’s capital had gathered there, 
Her beauty and her chivaly; and bright 
The lamps shone o’er fair women and brave men.” 
is exceeded by nothing I had previously seen. Its sta¬ 
tues, bowers, walks, and lofty trees, were perfectly in 
keeping with the rows of beautiful buildings all round. 
Nearly all of them are white, being covered with a kind 
of stucco, which gives Jo them an expression of great 
neatness. The Cathedral is a stupendous pile, upon 
which every body remarks as a matter of course. The 
Town Hall is equally an object of attraction. The man¬ 
ufactories from which the famed Brussels lace is derived, 
are open to strangers; and the poor girls, whose skill in 
the production of the exquisitely fine articles, is attained 
by working in rooms from which nearly all light is ex¬ 
cluded, may be seen at their toil. 
From the capital of Belgium for many miles toward 
Liege, the country is very similar to that between Ostende 
and Brussels—low, plain, well tilled, irregularly sha¬ 
ped fields of yellowish loam. Liege occupies the incli¬ 
nations about a grand amphitheatre, and is the com¬ 
mencement of a section of the Vervier railway, upon 
which are most beautiful specimens of architecture, in 
bridges, tunnels, extended embankments, &c. I am safe 
in saying there could not have been less than twenty tun¬ 
nels, and some of them a full mile in length, in the sec¬ 
tion between Liege and the Prussian frontier at Aix La 
Chapelle. The viaducts are of hewn stone, and were 
massive and tasteful in the highest degree. It served to 
remind me of the “cut” through Mt. Washington, east¬ 
ward from Pittsfield, though the Vervier railway has 
been constructed at a far greater expense. 
The crossing of the confines of Prussia at Aix La Cha¬ 
pelle, is characterized by the examination of Juggageand 
visaing of passports. Charlemagne's resting place, we 
had no time to see, and we were denied a visit to the in¬ 
teresting points about this town, as well as Waterloo and 
Cologne, by the fact that the fall course in Chemistry at 
Giessen, had already been in progress a fortnight. 
At Cologne, a most strongly fortified town, I looked 
for the first time upon the Rhine; a stream with low- 
banks, and about as wide as the Hudson at Gattskill. 
From Cologne to Bonn, the banks are skirted through 
much of the distance with trees, and the scenery is about 
as interesting as that along a bayou in Texas, or a canal 
in a prairie. On one side, a tow path, along which, hor¬ 
ses to the number of eight or ten, (eleven in one in¬ 
stance,) are walking with a long boat in train. The ves¬ 
sels are laden with all kinds of merchandise, coal, &c., 
and are on their way from the lower towns on the Rhine 
to Coblentz, Mayence, and the intervening villages. Be¬ 
sides these, freight boats, (which are supplied with masts 
and sails,) there are skiff’s and barges, long and narrow, 
which seat from twenty to thirty men, women and 
children, in addition to provisions and luggage for a long- 
voyage. Of the rafts of timber on the Rhine, every body 
has heard, and many have doubted the accuracy of re¬ 
presentations. Several that I saw were of such gigantic 
dimensions, that I almost fear to name them. On one, 
there were about fifty men, whose labors consisted in di¬ 
recting the course of the raft. Dwellings, in which the 
relief watch ate and slept, were erected at four different 
places on the raft, and its whole area must have been 
three hundred by four hundred and fifty feet. The guide 
books mention them as being manned by from 400 to 
500 men, but I saw nothing like so many. The number 
is probably augmented to this extent when the raft reach¬ 
es the lower Rhine, and is rowed instead of being float¬ 
ed anil merely guided. Pigs and poultry, with the stock 
of provisions, are kept on board. The timber is from the 
sources of the Rhine. It consists of straight trunks like 
masts, and is cut on the tops of mountains about these tri¬ 
butaries, where it is made to slide down, after the man¬ 
ner of the log and board slides on the Alleghany and Ge¬ 
nesee. In addition to the tow path, there is on the left 
bank, a fine McAdam road, commenced by the Romans. 
At Bonn, the vineyards first appear. This is a walled 
town, and the seat of one of the first Universities on the 
continent. Here Schlegel was a professor; and here now, 
is Godfreys, the writer upon organic remains, whose com¬ 
peer in America, has the Palaeontology of New-York in 
charge. There are here other agricultural productions 
more numerous than the vines, but as the river is ascend¬ 
ed, the proportion of land appropriated to the growth 
of the grape increases. The vines are permitted to grow 
to the height of about three feet, and are each tied to a 
rod of the same altitude. The rows are not more than 
two feet apart, and the individual grape vines in each 
row, much nearer. All the leaves were quite yellow in 
the advanced season, and the fruit had been gathered 
about a month previous. Some of the grapes which I 
procured, and from which much of the light wine about 
Bingen is expressed, were very like the Summer Sweet 
Water in flavor, though less in size. From a few miles 
above Bonn, all the way to Mayence, about a hundred 
and twenty miles, the hills and mountains are every 
where overspread with vineyards. Where the hills are 
very steep, the declivity is terraced; and I counted in one 
place thirty-six stone wall terraces, one above another. 
There are indeed few hill- sides not terraced. In some 
places, the grape vines are grown in baskets, which are 
filled with muck and lodged in some niche of a cliff'. 
Zigzag pathways extend from bottom to top, and along 
these, I saw numbers of the peasantry carrying the earth 
with which to sustain the vines. This labor I under¬ 
stand must be frequently repeated, or the grapes are un¬ 
productive. 
Will your readers fancy a wider and deeper river than 
the Hudson, flowing through continuous Highlands, fora 
hundred miles. Then all these Highlands from the base to 
the summit, and as far up the lateral ravines as the eye can 
reach; nothing but rows of grape vines and walled ter¬ 
races; then these rows of vines having a direction cor¬ 
responding to the most direct line of descent, in order, I 
suppose, that the rain may readily flow away; then a dis¬ 
tinct limit to every five or six or twenty square rods, 
marking the possessions of a single individual, and giv¬ 
ing the appearance of a beautiful garden without bounds, 
and they may have some idea of the vintage of the Rhine. 
I stood with my friend, all absorbed with these features 
of the scenery, but subdued with the associations that 
crowded upon me, I looked upon others, as immortalized 
in Childe Harold, and renowned in histox-y from before 
the Christian era to the close of Napoleon’s career. The 
passes, the castles, lowers, fortresses, the ancient towns 
so numerous as to scarcely afford time for enumeration 
as you pass them—cannot be described. Here is a for* 
tress from which a robber compelled vessels ascending 
the Rhine, to pay tribute. It caps and flanks a mountain, 
as if Anthony’s Nose, near West Point, were tunneled and 
walled and crowned with stupendous masonry. Here is 
the place where Constantine saw the ci’oss: here the 
convents of the times of the Crusades; here the castles 
and towers of the feudal ages; here the road that Caesar 
and his legions trod; and here an abutment of his famous 
bridge; and here—but I cannot write of them. I have 
determined upon passing a part at least of my next sum¬ 
mer’s vacation among the vineyards and w-onders of the 
Rhine, between Cologne and Switzerland, when I shall 
hope to learn among other things, the secret of the vine 
culture. Truly yours, E. N. Horsford. 
MR. MITCHELL’S LETTERS—No. V. 
Trip from Liverpool to Jersey—The Markets—English 
Farmeries—Food of Laborers, SfC. 
St. Hiliers, Jersey, Feb. 1, 18-15. 
Luther Tucker, Esq.—In my last, for Liverpool to 
Gravesend in closing paragraph, read f< Liverpool to 
Plymouth;” and for “vines and pruning hooks of France,” 
read e< orchards and dairies of Jersey.” The change of 
aiTangement was made after dispatch of letter. The road 
to Birmingham, was gone over mostly in the dark of the 
morning; it not being fairly light in that latitude, till af¬ 
ter eight. The grass, I could see, was yielding to the 
unusual severity of the winter, and assuming the yellow 
tinge of ours in October. Nor were there wanting, along 
the wav, evidences of bad management, such as foul 
grass lands, straggling hedges, and imperfect tillage; 
