SCENE AT THE PASSPORT OFFICE.

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on their folds, as the last prayer was breathed for the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre !

I must now close the catalogue. This morning we shall look upon Vienna for the last time. Our knapsacks are repacked, and the passports (precious documents!) visèd for Munich. The getting of this visè, however, caused a comical scene at the Police Office, yesterday. We entered the Inspector's Hall and took our stand quietly among the crowd of persons who were gathered around a railing which separated them from the main office. One of the clerks came up, scowling at us, and asked in a rough tone, "What do you want here?" We handed him our tickets of sojourn (for when a traveler spends more than twenty-four hours in a German city, he must take out a permission and pay for it) with the request that he would give us our passports. He glanced over the tickets, came back and with constrained politeness asked us to step within the railing. Here we were introduced to the Chief Inspector. "Desire Herr to come here," said he to

a servant; then turning to us, "I am happy to see the gentlemen in Vienna." An officer immediately came up, who addressed us in fluent English. "You may speak in your native tongue," said the Inspector:-" excuse our neglect; from the facility with which you speak German, we supposed you were natives of Austria!" Our passports were signed at once and given us with a gracious bow, accompanied by the hope that we would visit Vienna again before long. All this, of course, was perfectly unintelligible to the wondering crowd outside the railing. Seeing however, the honors we were receiving, they crowded back and respectfully made room for us to pass out. I kept a grave face till we reached the bottom of the stairs, when I gave way to restrained laughter in a manner that shocked the dignity of the guard, who looked savagely at me over his forest of moustache. I would nevertheless have felt grateful for the attention we received as Americans, were it not for our uncourteous reception as suspected Austrians.

We have just been exercising the risible muscles again, though from a very different cause, and one which, according to common custom, ought to draw forth symptoms of a lachrymose nature. This morning B-suggested an examination of our funds, for

we had neglected keeping a strict account, and what with being cheated in Bohemia and tempted by the amusements of Vienna, there was an apparent dwindling away. So we emptied our pockets and purses, counted up the contents, and found we had just ten florins, or four dollars apiece. The thought of our situation, away in the heart of Austria, five hundred miles from our Frankfort home, seems irresistibly laughable. By allowing twenty days for the journey, we shall have half a florin a day, to travel This is a homœopathic allowance, indeed, but we have concluded to try it. So now adieu, Vienna! In two hours we shall be among the hills again

on.

THE DANUBE.

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CHAPTER XXIII

UP THE DANUBE.

WE passed ou. of Vienna in the face of one of the strongest winds it was ever my lot to encounter. It swept across the plain with such force that it was almost impossible to advance till we got under the lee of a range of hills. About two miles from the barrier we passed Schoenbrunn, the Austrian Versailles. It was built by the Empress Maria Theresa, and was the residence of Napoleon in 1809, when Vienna was in the hands of the French. Later, in 1832, the Duke of Reichstadt died in the same room which his father once occupied. Behind the palace is a magnificent garden, at the foot of a hill covered with rich forests and crowned with an open pillared hall, 300 feet long, called the Gloriette. The colossal eagle which surmounts it, can be seen a great distance.

The lovely valley in which Schoenbrunn lies, follows the course of the little river Vienna into the heart of that mountain region lying between the Styrian Alps and the Danube, and called the Vienna Forest. Into this our road led, between hills covered with wood, with here and there a lovely green meadow, where herds of cattle were grazing. The third day we came to the Danube again at Melk, a little city built under the edge of a steep hill, on whose summit stands the palace-like abbey of the Benedictine Monks. The old friars must have had a merry life of it, for the wine-cellar of the abbey furnished the French army 50,000 measures for several days in succession. The shores of the Danube here are extremely beautiful. The valley where it spreads out, is filled with groves, but where the hills approach the stream, its banks are rocky and precipitous, like the Rhine. Although not so picturesque as the latter river, the scenery of the Danube is on a grander scale. On the south side the mountains

bend down to it with a majestic sweep, and there must be delightful glances into the valleys that lie between, in passing down the current.

But we soon left the river, and journeyed on through the enchanting inland vales. To give an idea of the glorious enjoyment of traveling through such scenes, let me copy a leaf out of my journal, written as we rested at noon on the top of a lofty hill :-" Here, while the delightful mountain breeze that comes fresh from the Alps cools my forehead, and the pines around are sighing their eternal anthem, I seize a few moments to tell what a paradise is around me. I have felt an elevation of mind and spirit, a perfect rapture from morning till night, since we left Vienna. It is the brightest and balmiest June weather; an ever fresh breeze sings through the trees and waves the ripening grain on the verdant meadows and hill-slopes. The air is filled with bird-music. The larks sing above us out of sight, the bullfinch wakes his notes in the grove, and at eve the nightingale pours forth her thrilling strain. The meadows are literally covered with flowers-beautiful purple salvias, pinks such as we have at home in our gardens and glowing buttercups, color the banks of every stream. I never saw richer or more luxuriant foliage. Magnificent forests clothe the hills, and the villages are imbedded in fruit trees, shrubbery and flowers. Sometimes we go for miles through some enchanting valley, lying like a paradise between the mountains, while the distant, white Alps look on it from afar; sometimes over swelling ranges of hills, where we can see to the right the valley of the Danube, threaded by his silver current and dotted with white cottages and glittering spires, and farther beyond, the blue mountains of the Bohemian Forest. To the left, the range of the Styrian Alps stretches along the sky, summit above summit, the farther ones robed in perpetual snow. I could never tire gazing on those glorious hills. They fill the soul with a conception of sublimity, such as one feels when listening to triumphal music. They seem like the marble domes of a mighty range of temples, where earth worships her Maker with an organ-anthem of storms!

"There is a luxury in traveling here. We walk all day through such scenes, resting often in the shade of the fruit trees which

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line the road, or on a mossy bank by the side of some cool forest. Sometimes for enjoyment as well as variety, we make our diningplace by a clear spring instead of within a smoky tavern; and our simple meals have a relish an epicure could never attain. Away with your railroads and steamboats and mail-coaches, or keep them for those who have no eye but for the sordid interests of life! With my knapsack and pilgrim-staff, I ask not their aid. If a mind and soul full of rapture with beauty, a frame in glowing and vigorous health, and slumbers unbroken even by dreams, are blessings any one would attain, let him pedestrianize it through Lower Austria !"

I have never been so strongly and constantly reminded of America, as during this journey. Perhaps the balmy season, the same in which I last looked upon the dear scenes of home, may have its effect; but there is besides a richness in the forests and waving fields of grain, a wild luxuriance over every landscape, which I have seen nowhere else in Europe. The large farm houses, buried in orchards, scattered over the valleys, add to the effect. Everything seems to speak of happiness and prosperity.

We were met one morning by a band of wandering Bohemian gipsies the first of the kind I ever saw. A young woman with a small child in her arms came directly up to me, and looking full in my face with her wild black eyes, said, without any preface: "Yes, he too has met with sorrow and trouble already, and will still have more. But he is not false-he is true and sincere, and will also meet with good luck!" She said she could tell me three numbers with which I should buy a lottery ticket and win a great prize. I told her I would have nothing to do with the lottery, and would buy no ticket, but she persisted, say. ing: "Has he a twenty kreutzer piece ?-will he give it? Lay it in his hand and make a cross over it, and I will reveal the numbers!" On my refusal, she became angry, and left me, saying: "Let him take care-the third day something will happen to him!" An old, wrinkled hag made the same proposition to my companion with no better success. They reminded me strikingly of our Indians; their complexion is a dark brown, and their eyes and hair are black as night. These belonged to a