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There is a schloss here, which, to our surprise, we learned, belongs, like the lordship of the manor, to the same graff who owns the land about Aderspach on the other side of the Riesengebirgen. I have forgotten both his name and his title; but he must be a wealthy nobleman, even for Austria; which, while it possesses many poor, can likewise muster some of the richest noblemen in the world.
Sweeping over a vast and fertile plain, throughout which abundance of wood is scattered, and resting from time to time upon some old ruin, one of which, called Kreifenstein Castle, and the property of Graff Schaff-Koatch, presents a peculiarly striking appearance, the eye finds its powers of vision bounded at last by the Riesengebirgen, which have as yet lost no portion of the sublimity of character that belongs to them, though they are now removed to a distance, as the crow flies, of at least twenty miles.
We rise next morning at seven, to find that here, even more keenly than at Troutenau, the influence of an elevated situation is felt, and that over the long inclined plane which stretches upwards from us in the direction of the Riesengebirgen, a sharp, cold wind blows cuttingly.
Though the route from Warmbrunn to Hirschberg conducted us over a dusty main-road, and the heat of the day was overpowering, we could not help stopping, from time to time, to look back upon the magnificent scene which we were leaving behind us. Viewed from this side, the Riesengebirgen offer a much bolder and grander outline than when looked at from Bohemia.
It was a fine bright bracing morning, and the clocks were striking seven when we quitted Troutenau; a very pretty clean town, well situated, on the slope of a hill, and commanding, as I have hinted above, a noble view of the snowy ridges of the Riesengebirgen.
For as the term Riesengebirgen signifies "The Giant's Mountains," so these fells are represented by tradition to have been the abode of the monster-man, after whom the range which separates Bohemia from Silesia has been named.
Moreover, to a varied and picturesque extent of hill and vale, forest and green meadow, hamlet and town, the latter either cast into the recess of some deep glen, or straggling upwards along the mountain side, the Riesengebirgen formed the back ground; bald, and frowning in all the majesty of rocky shoulders and snow-clad summits.
After climbing with infinite toil a long and steep ridge, by crossing which a prodigious detour was to be saved, we gained a point whence, on one hand, the eye could range over no inconsiderable portion of Bohemia; while on the other, the snowy peaks of the Riesengebirgen bounded the prospect, though still separated from us by a wide breadth of highlands.
When, then, I have stated, that our path carried us over hill and dale, that we threaded deep forests, and from time to time traversed an open plain, and that all this while the snowy ridges of the Riesengebirgen stood up like a wall upon our left hand, I have left myself nothing in the shape of description to add, out of which the reader could hope to derive an accession, either to his information or his amusement.
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