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Both rivers, coming from the Giant Mountains, hasten directly north; but Oder, bulging out easterly in his sandy course, is obliged to turn fairly westward again; and at Glogau, and a good space farther, flows in that direction; till once Bober strikes in, almost at right angles, carrying Oder with HIM, though he is but a branch, straight northward again.
Friedrich himself commands the other column, has his left upon the Oder, in a country mounting continually towards the South, but with less irregularity of level, and generally flat as yet. From beginning to end, the entire field of march lies between the Oder and its tributary the Bober; climbing slowly towards the sources of both.
Length of the Army, artistically portioned out, may be ten or fifteen miles, breadth already more, and growing more; Schwerin always on the right or western wing, close by the Bober River as yet, through Naumburg and the Towns on that side, Liegnitz and other important Towns lying ahead for Schwerin, still farther apart from the main Body, were Glogau once settled.
The Bober does not become a trout-stream till long after it has lost sight of the source from whence it springs, and we had our walk, with the conversation of the young burgomaster and a friend of his, a learned baker in the village, as our reward. The historical researches of the latter gentleman had been very extensive, and he possessed a laudable zeal to make this known.
Sagan Town may be about 70 miles northward of where Friedrich now is: from Sagan, were they once in the meridian of Sagan, their road is free eastward and northward; to Crossen is about 60 miles north-by-east from Sagan, to Frankfurt near 100 north. Sagan is on the Bober; Bober, in every event, is between the Austrians and their aim.
And is clear across the Bober; when lo, among the knolls ahead, masses of Austrian Cavalry are seen waiting him, besetting every passage! Even these do not break him; but these, with infantry and cannon coming up to help them, do. Here, for some time, was the fiercest tug of all, till a bullet having killed Fouquet's horse, and carried the General himself to the ground, the spasm ended.
There are Saxons already gathering about Zittau; and down as far as Guben they are making Magazines and arrangements, for it is all their own Country in those years, though most of it is Prussia's now. Prince Karl's march will go parallel to the Bober and the Queiss; separated from the Queiss in this part by an undulating Hill-tract of twenty miles or more.
I felt once more that I was neither in life's prime, nor a denizen of "bonny Scotland;" so I listened to certain suggestions which my young companion had for some time been making, and agreed to accompany him a little way down the course of the Bober, while he tried to fish. We went accordingly, but to no purpose.
On the 21st of August the scouts reported the approach of the hostile columns, who had crossed the Bober at Lowenberg. Blucher's eyes lit up with delight; he stroked his white mustache, and said: "We shall have a fight! To-morrow we meet the French!" But the morning of the 23d of August dawned, and the eyes of the general were still unable to descry the advancing enemy.
There is scarcely a lake in the whole kingdom, and, with the exception of two or three, such as the Elbe, the Iser, the Bober, &c., the rivers hardly deserve to take rank with the larger class of our mountain streams.
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