CHAPTER XIX.

GERMAN WATERING-PLACES—BINGEN ON THE RHINE.

A GERMAN watering-place, with its nauseous springs, its inviting groves and garden and shady walks and rustic seats and bowers, its conversation house, and sweet, clean beds and airy rooms and quiet halls, was in our way, and a Sabbath was just ahead of us. So we would rest there according to the commandment.

I have been left alone, or with my little party only, in a wayside inn, among the Swiss valleys, and have seen troops of travellers, some of them with white cravats and straight coat collars, go on their way of a bright, glad, summer Sabbath morning, when it seemed to me the mountains looked down with a divine benediction and invited us to sit all day under their shadows and worship toward the holy hill of Zion. And a Sabbath in a wilderness, alone, is well spent, if the soul is at peace, and the wearied limbs of a pilgrim are suffered also to have rest.

If a land impregnated with salt is cursed, this region ought to be barren; but it is not. It is a rich, picturesque, rolling country, and a beautiful river flows through its waving harvest-fields, just now white for the sickle. Sometimes a bold cliff stands majestically on the river-side, and an old feudal castle hangs on the summit, where once the lord of the domain held high revel and strong rule, a robber on land and a pirate on the river he would be called now, since his race has run out, and kings who do the same things that he did are reckoned as the lawful plunderers as well as rulers of the people. So the robber told Alexander, and the king couldn’t see it, but it was true nevertheless.

They make salt curiously in these parts. The water is pumped up from springs or wells into troughs, which are raised on scaffolding thirty or more feet high; and below these troughs a solid mass of brush is piled, a wall some ten feet thick, standing on a reservoir; this brush wall reaches hundreds and thousands of feet along, according to the extent of the works employed. The pumps are moved by water-power, and slowly and steadily, ceaselessly, day and night, they raise the water into the troughs above, through which it trickles upon this brush and drops down, down, down into the basins below; this exposes the water to the action of the air and rapidly evaporates it; so that what runs through the heap and finally reaches the reservoir below is exceedingly strong, and by completing the process with boiling is readily converted into salt.

The vicinity of these works is a healthful resort for invalids, who find the atmosphere more highly charged with saline particles than the shores of the sea itself. In the neighborhood of the mighty wall of wood are boarding-houses, as at the sea-shore, and in the pleasant, shady side the ladies sit with their needle-work or books in hand, inhaling the invigorating air, and enjoying the quietest, coolest, and most bracing climate in hot weather, and on the outskirts of the fashionable world. On the bank of the river we found a place to stay, and from it made excursions into the regions beyond. A rock, rising one thousand feet perpendicularly from the water, held on its giddy summit the tottering remnants of the fortress of one of the petty tyrants of the olden time, and a circuit of five or six miles, in a broiling day, brought us by a path that no wheels can traverse to the height. Tradition tells of the last of the barons who held his court in these walls; how his daughter was loved and wooed by his rival chieftain, whose castle still stands erect across the river a few miles below and in full view of this; how the “cruel father” refused to give his daughter to his foe, and the lover lured her by the arts of love to aid him in his daring scheme to capture her father’s castle and compel him to surrender her in exchange for his liberty and his home; how the stratagem succeeded, and the circumvented parent threw himself headlong from the rampart into the frightful abyss, and the lovers, after destroying the stronghold, removed to their castle below, and became the ancestors of a distinguished family of an unpronounceable German name. All this tradition tells, and to write it all out would be perhaps worth the while of some one who has nothing better to do.

Our next stopping-place was Homburg, one of the more modern, but the most brilliant of the watering-places in Europe. Like some of our own cities, it has rapidly rushed into _notoriety_; that is just the word for the reputation it has made for itself, and by which it has made its fortunes and ruined the fortunes of thousands who have sought its hospitalities.

A very few years ago a wide waste of marshy meadows, swamps we would call them, lay around and over the spot that now gathers and holds for the season the fashion and style and rank of the gayest European capitals,—the largest and most distinguished circle of “the upper classes” to be found at any fashionable resort in the world. It is a city of hotels, and these on a scale of elegance that is not surpassed. But between these hotels and the waters of health that first drew the crowds hither, are these original meadows, now covered with young woods, and intersected by numberless walks and drives, in which a stranger might easily be lost, and left to wander hours and hours without finding his way out. Beyond these shaded groves we come to the springs, several, with various properties, very kindly arranged to meet the many maladies of man, and all of them sufficiently disagreeable to be medicinal. Neatness, order, elegance reign everywhere. Around the springs, through the avenues overhung with venerable trees, along the rows of beautiful lodging-houses and residences of those who permanently pass the summer here, the quietness of private life rests with a grace and charm quite rare in a great watering-place. This gives to Homburg such an attraction that thousands of the quietest class of people in the world love to come here for refreshment and repose. They need not go into the Kursaal, though that word means cure-hall or cure-house. I would call it Kursaal, or curse-all, because it is the curse of all who are drawn into its vortex.

It is a palace. In its extent, its proportions, and appointments, it is fit for a royal residence, all the arts of ornamentation being exhausted to make it a splendid temple of pleasure, instead of a hospital or asylum for the sick and suffering. This palace, with its broad piazzas looking upon beautiful gardens, where elegant women are sitting under the shade, with their books or fancy needle-work, while a German band fills the soft and fragrant atmosphere with delicious waves of music; this palace, with its concert-rooms and ball-rooms and reading-rooms, filled with all the choicest periodicals of all nations, which studious old men are diligently pondering; this palace, so still, so beautiful, so gorgeous in its decorations, and so well fitted to bear the inscription which Ptolemy Soter put upon his library at Alexandria, “The Medicine of the Soul,”—this palace was also the great gambling-house in Europe.

A grand saloon that stretches across the house holds two long tables, around which are seated thirty or forty men and women, intent, silent, more statue than life-like. With your eyes closed you would scarcely be conscious that any one was in the room. The clicking of gold and silver on the table, the few words of the manager as he decides a point, an occasional deep-drawn sigh as pent-up emotion finds escape, with now and then an involuntary exclamation, evidently out of order and quite disagreeable to all concerned,—these are the only interruptions to the _solemn_, painful stillness of the Homburg gaming-table. I have heard that something more startling than an oath or a groan sometimes has interrupted the current of the play, and that a gambler, in a paroxysm of rage and despair, has blown out his brains at the table. But such incidents are not of every-day occurrence. Besides, people who play here have not many brains to blow out. They are not insane. But as a class, they are below the average of the human family in intellectual force, because they stake their money with the knowledge that the chances are not _even_, are always against them, and in favor of the bank, or managers of the table. In playing _roulette_, or _rouge et noir_, the two games which are constantly going on, a bystander sees that the _taker_ draws in more than he shoves out, and that the tendency of things is steadily in favor of the bank, while _chance_ favors the victims just often enough to keep up the hope that they will make a grand hit by and by and make up all their losses. Yet the game is so transparently in the hands of the managers, that one wonders any one can be so big a fool as to lose all his money in such hopeless ventures. The bank sets up a certain amount of money every day, as the capital for _that_ day, and stories are told of some heavy gambler now and then breaking the bank, but that means only that by a fortunate run he has cleaned out what was set up for the time, and to-morrow it is all right again with the same or a larger capital. But these stories are mostly fictitious, set afloat by the bank itself, which, by pretending to be _broken_, encourages the idea that it is just as apt to lose money as those who are playing against it.

Some of these people are historic characters. One of them here now is the brother of the Viceroy of Egypt, and he plays heavily, but stops when he has had excitement enough. A fatalist by profession, he takes his chances as decrees, and consoles himself with other pleasures when these go against him. A German princess, who is the model of all the virtues at home, gratifies a darling passion during the summer months by wasting half her income in this gambling-house. American travellers are the most cautious of all the company; but now and then a dissipated youngster takes a plunge into swifter ruin in the waters of this terrible stream. Most pitiable it is to see fair women, and sometimes women that are known to be exemplary in society beyond the sea, trying it just once, tempting luck; and if they lose they usually stop after the first loss, but if they win they try again, and so on, until they lose all they have about them and can borrow of their friends.

A few hours’ ride across the country brought us to Kreusnach. The name of this watering-place had never reached me before, and it added one more to the many _springs_ or _spas_ with which Germany abounds. An army of servants rushed out to the carriage, as we drew up to the door of the Hotel Hollande, and in good English proffered their services to take us and our luggage in. The luggage we leave on the carriage until the rooms and the terms are found agreeable, and as we could have a handsome parlor and bedroom adjoining, on the front of the house, second floor, for one thaler, or six francs ($1.20) a day, we were not long in deciding that this was the place to stay in.

The salt springs of this region have long been known, but only of late have the wonderful medicinal properties of the waters been understood. Now some sixty thousand persons come here annually, and the number is increasing. The people, waking up to the idea that they have a fountain of wealth as well as of health in the bubbling spring, have erected a cure-house on an island in the river Nahe, and hotels and lodging-houses have sprung up along the stream; a regimen has been prescribed, by which the greatest good of the healing waters may be had, but it is left to the choice of the visitor whether he will follow the rules or disobey them, and go away no better than he came.

At Kissingen it is not so. In that delightful little town, where royal blood comes to be purified, and nobles as well as commons gather in great numbers every year, they are so jealous of the honor of their waters, that no visitor is permitted to tarry in the place who will not comply with the rules of eating and drinking and bodily exercise which are prescribed by the medical authorities. These rules are simple and wholesome, and it will do you good to take the course, but if you will not, they take their course with you, which is to send you out of town forthwith, lest you should lose your health by your imprudence, and so bring discredit on the Kissingen waters. Fancy such a law as that at Saratoga! It is said that more sick people go away from the springs than come, but this is not to be affirmed of Kissingen, beautiful Kissingen, the cheapest and prettiest of the health-giving spas of Germany. A clergyman in Paris told me that he spends a month in Kissingen every summer, fifty dollars paying all his expenses,—going, staying, and coming home!

You can live nearly,—not quite,—as cheaply here at Kreusnach. The band, a fine German band, discourses sweet music in the park near the spring, at six o’clock in the morning; we drink,—faugh! yes, we drink the salt and horrid water and return to breakfast at eight, after a promenade in the groves; at eleven a bath is to be taken in the hotel, to which the water is carried in barrels and emptied into a reservoir, from which it is led into the baths; it is artificially warmed to the temperature of the blood; it is strengthened by the addition of the strong, boiled salt water that remains uncrystallized at the salt-works in the vicinity; and this water, sold for this purpose, brings more money, by a third, than the salt itself. This drinking and bathing are good for scrofulous and all cutaneous complaints; for bad livers, that is, for those whose livers are bad; for dyspeptics, rheumatic people, and all kindred ailments. Indeed, these German springs are a pretty sure cure for almost any of the ordinary, perhaps extraordinary, ills of the flesh, because the climate is good, the mountain air is bracing, and the regimen requires a fair amount of temperance and exercise; and he must be in a very bad way who will not get well under the simple, exhilarating, purifying, and strengthening influences of this kind of life.

Here in Kreusnach we meet with men and women from the most distant parts of the Continent, attracted by the fame of this salt water. A Russian gentleman and wife, with an infant child, on whose account they came, had travelled six weeks in a sledge to St. Petersburg. Their children had died of scrofula, and they brought this live one over that vast tract of country, through northern cold, that its system in infancy might be renovated by this modern Bethesda. The Princess of Mecklenberg is here now, and last Sunday she proposed to attend the English Church service. The good rector heard of her intention, and thought it his duty to call and pay his respects. Unhappily he could not speak a word of German, and when he attempted to introduce himself at the door of the Princess’ lodgings, the servant understood him to be the postman, and brought him the letters ready to go to the post-office. His call was only deference to rank, and there was no need of it, except as every sinner needs a pastor’s care, and the Princess took no notice of it.

At a cell in the hill-side near the spring, _whey_ is dispensed to those who daily drink it for the whey-cure. It has a great repute. So has the grape-cure in August and September. Either of them is just as good as the salt-water-cure, and that is good beyond a doubt. I have great faith in any kind of doctoring that includes rest from business, with moderate eating and drinking, and plenty of exercise in the open air. Give the waters the credit of it, or the whey, or the grapes, or the doctors, it makes no difference what or who has the credit, if you have the cure.

But stop this everlasting rushing after the world that is perishing, and wait a little while at Kreusnach, or Kissingen, or one of a dozen places I could name. Here take your ease. Eat, drink, and be happy. Bathe your weary limbs in these youth-renewing waters. Walk out among these surrounding forests and hills. There stands the ruined Castle of Rheingraffenstein, on a crag that overhangs the Nahe; wind your way up one side, and when you have rested on the height, pick your way down the other side to a garden on the banks of the river; there refresh again; then in one of the little boats be rowed down to Ebernburg, the site of an ancient castle, which has now been remodelled into a hotel; but the relics of Luther and other Reformers who once were sheltered here are still preserved, as well as the balls with which the French blew the old towers off the hill into the waters below. Rusty swords, spears, chains, and old keys are laid in heaps, as some slight index of the good time coming, when spears and swords shall be turned into ploughs and pruning-knives.

Where the Nahe flows into the Rhine, there or about there, stands Bingen, and no amount of pretty poetry that has been said or sung about “Bingen on the Rhine” can make it any thing but a dull, dry, flat, dusty village, and horribly disagreeable at noon on a scorching hot day, such as this. We footed it half a mile from the station under a blazing sun, as there was no way to ride, and found a cool shade, while waiting for the steamboat to come up the river. The sight was romantic and picturesque. In the water, a little way above us, stand the ruins of Bishop Hatto’s tower, the story of which is too familiar to be told again. He had hoarded corn in a time of famine, and the rats pursued him for his wickedness. He fled to this tower in the river. The rats swam out to it, ran up the walls, found their way in, and cleaned the Bishop’s bones for him. Southey has done the story into a ballad.

The Castle of Ehrenfels is on the side of the hill across the river, and the Rudesheimer vineyards on the hill-sides furnish that celebrated variety. All the Rhine wines are named from the castle, chateau, or neighborhood where they are made. The flavor depends more on the soil than on the art with which the wine is made. The process is substantially the same in all the vineyards, but the flavor of the liquor is decidedly different. The hill-sides are so steep, and the rains are sometimes so heavy, that the soil is often carried down into the bed of the rivers. It can then be recovered only by scooping it from the bottom, and carrying it up in baskets. This is done every year. We might fear it would be spoiled by being carried into the river, but the loss of strength is not enough to alter the nature of the original. Some of the brands are famous, and the prices vary accordingly; but the cheapness of these wines here on the ground, compared with New York, makes one readily believe that the importation of wines must be among the most money-making of all kinds of business. Vinegar and water is quite as good a drink as much of this wine, and a little sugar added makes it better. Prince Metternich owns the famous Johannisberg vineyard, a little farther on, of seventy acres, of which many and fabulous tales are told of the small quantity and great prices of the wine, of the celebrated men who have owned the vineyard, and how very costly the wine becomes by age. But I will not weary you with them. The river itself is identified with the history of Europe. Taking its rise in the St. Gothard Pass in Switzerland, it receives tributaries all the way down, yet it is a small and comparatively insignificant stream. But kings have often fought for it, and it was the late French Emperor’s highest ambition to water his horses in the Rhine.

The art of printing makes Mayence immortal, and here we stopped to look at the monument to Guttenberg, its inventor, a grand statue by Thorvaldsen. It is the fate of few inventors to get their due in their lifetime; some of them want bread, and the public will not give them even a stone till long after they have been starved to death. It was the fate of Guttenberg to struggle hard for years against rival claimants to the credit and the profit of his invention, and so incredulous is the world of the truth,—though ready enough to believe a lie,—that his existence was called in question, and his name has been pronounced a myth. And to this day there are people who think that Faust, who is popularly reported to be the—or in league with the—devil, had more to do with the black art invention than Guttenberg. They, that is Guttenberg and Faust, were in partnership for a while, but that was long after the real inventor had made the art a success, and the claims of Faust and his son-in-law Schoffer, both of whom were willing to be credited with the invention, have now given way to the light of evidence, and Guttenberg holds his own against the field. It is in legal proof that as early as 1438 Guttenberg was at work with his press and movable types. In 1450 he formed a partnership with Faust to carry on the business of printing, and he died in 1468. In a book published at Mayence in 1505, Johan Schoffer states “that the admirable art of printing was invented in Mentz (Mayence), in 1450, by the ingenious Johan Guttenberg, and was subsequently improved and handed down to posterity by the capital and labor of Johan Faust and Peter Schoffer.” The writer of this was the son of Peter Schoffer. He is mistaken in the date, for it is easily proved that Guttenberg was printing many years before 1450, which was the date not of the invention, but of his entering into partnership with Faust.

As I stood in front of this monument to a man whose genius and industry gave to the world this great boon, the statue itself appeared to be sublimely eloquent, as if from those lips, representatives of the lips long since returned to dust, was now going forth the streams of wisdom and knowledge and power that make up the rivers of happiness and usefulness in the art of printing as it has blessed mankind for four centuries, and will continue to flow with increasing volume to the end of time. Perhaps somebody else would have _invented_ the art if he had not. It may be that God would have made another man whose brain would be the womb from which this grand invention would have sprung. But there stands the man who first began to print with movable types, and from his beginning the work has gone forward, widening in its reach and power, and is yet only in the infancy of its career. If he could have anticipated even the present extent of its influence, what mighty emotions would have swelled his heart! And as I look upon this image of him, I feel that beyond any other mere man who has ever lived in the annals of time, he is entitled to stand pre-eminent as the benefactor of the human race. And it is worth remarking that scarcely any art has made so little real improvement for the last three hundred years, as the art of type-making. The types were as clear cut, and the impression just as perfect then as now. We do work faster and cheaper, but not better.

I walked into the cathedral and fell to musing among the ruinous tombs; a few children were gathered in one corner and a priest was engaged in giving them instruction; the setting sun was lighting up the colored arches and naves of red sandstone, giving a peculiar effect to the shabby temple, but there was nothing here to divert my thoughts from the statue, the man, and the work commemorated. It was glory enough for one city to have been the birthplace of such an art. Pilgrims will come hither with increasing reverence in far distant years. And I hope they will have a cooler day than I had. The mercury is now at 96 in the shade.