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About half-way up we passed Ettal, at the entrance to the Valley of the Ammer. The great white temple, standing, surrounded by its little village, high up amid the mountain solitudes, is a famous place of pilgrimage among devout Catholics.
We parted at Ettal, and I pushed on down the narrow valley to Oberammergau. The road ahead was now in shadow, but behind me the mountain mass was dazzling white in the rays of the setting sun. "What a pity," I thought, "that the peasant must depart from these beautiful mountains and valleys to die in the slime of the trenches."
The fine new road winds through dark pine woods, climbing the hill in long zigzags above wild chasms, past the old monastery of Ettal, and then slowly descends to the soft Ammer meadows. The great peak of the Kofel is ever in front, while the main chain of the Bavarian Alps closes the view behind. Arrived in the little village, all was bustle and confusion.
It was a tolerably steep climb up the road from Murnau, over Mount Ettal, to Ammergau so steep, indeed, that one stout pilgrim not many years ago, died from the exertion while walking up. Sturdy-legged mountaineer and pulpy citizen both had to clamber up side by side, for no horses could do more than drag behind them the empty vehicle.
The express-train of twenty cars which carried us from Munich was crowded with people from almost every part of the civilized world. At Oberau, six miles from Oberammergau, at the foot of the Ettal Mountain, we left the railway, and there took part in a general scramble for seats in the carriages.
"A Feeling of Sadness Comes O'er Me." The German Cigar. The Handsomest Match in Europe. "How Easy 'tis for Friends to Drift Apart," especially in a place like Munich Railway Station. The Victim of Fate. A Faithful Bradshaw. Among the Mountains. Prince and Pauper. A Modern Romance. Arrival at Oberau. Wise and Foolish Pilgrims. An Interesting Drive. Ettal and its Monastery.
On the left, across the stage, over which the fitful rain-clouds chase one another, we can plainly see the long, green slope of Ettal mountain, dotted from bottom to top with herdmen's huts or châlets, and on the summit a tall pine-tree, standing out alone above all its brethren.
The railway now carries him round Mount Ettal to Oberau, from which little village a tolerably easy road, as mountain roadways go, of about four or five English miles takes him up to the valley of the Ammer. It was midnight when our train landed us at Oberau station; but the place was far more busy and stirring than on ordinary occasions it is at mid-day.
Later, when tramping through the Bavarian Highlands, I walked one winter day from Partenkirchen to Oberammergau, for I had a whim to know the truth of the matter. On the lonely mountain road that winds sharply up from Oberau I overtook a Benedictine monk who was walking to the monastery at Ettal.
The monastery, which was also rebuilt at the same time, now serves the more useful purpose of a brewery. From Ettal the road is comparatively level, and, jolting swiftly over it, we soon reached Ober-Ammergau.
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