History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 17 [28]
range" specially so called: northward and northeastward there rise, beyond that Falkenberg, many mountains, solitary or in groups,--"the Metal Mountains" fading out here into "the Lausitz Hills," still in fine picturesque fashion, which are Northern Border to the great Bohemian "Basin of the Elba," after you emerge from this Sandstone Country.
Saxon Switzerland is not very high anywhere; 2,000 feet is a notable degree of height: but it is torn and tumbled into stone labyrinths, chasms and winding rock-walls, as few regions are. Grows pinewood, to the topmost height; pine-trees far aloft look quietly down upon you, over sheer precipices, on your intricate path. On the slopes of the Hills is grass enough; in the intervals are Villages and husbandries, are corn and milk for the laborious natives,--who depend mainly on quarrying, and pine-forest work: pines and free-stone, rafts of long slim pines, and big stone barges, are what one sees upon the River there. A Note, not very geological, says of it:--
"Elbe sweeps freely through this Country, for ages and aeons past; curling himself a little into snake-figure, and with increased velocity, but silent mostly, and trim to the edge, a fine flint- colored river;--though in aeons long anterior, it must have been a very different matter for torrents and water-power. The Country is one huge Block of Sandstone, so many square miles of that material; ribbed, channelled, torn and quarried, in this manner, by the ever- busy elements, for a million of Ages past! Chiefly by the Elbe himself, since he got to be a River, and became cosmic and personal; ceasing to be a mere watery chaos of Lakes and Deluges hereabouts. For the Sandstone was of various degrees of hardness; tenacious as marble some parts of it, soft almost as sand other parts. And the primordial diluviums and world-old torrents, great and small, rushing down from the Bohemian Highlands, from the Saxon Metal Mountains, with such storming, gurgling and swashing, have swept away the soft parts, and left the hard standing in this chaotic manner, and bequeathed it all to the Elbe, and the common frosts and rains of these human ages.
"Elbe has now a trim course; but Elbe too is busy quarrying and mining, where not artificially held in;--and you notice at every outlet of a Brook from the interior, north side and south side, how busy the Brook has been. Boring, grinding, undermining; much helped by the frosts, by the rains. AEons ago, the Brook was a lake, in the interior; but was every moment laboring to get out; till it has cut for itself that mountain gullet, or sheer-down chasm, and brought out with it an Alluvium or Delta,--on which, since Adam's time, human creatures have built a Hamlet. That is the origin, or unwritten history, of most hamlets and cultivated spots you fall in with here: they are the waste shavings of the Brook, working millions of years, for its own object of getting into the Elbe in level circumstances. Ploughed fields, not without fertility, are in the interior, if you ascend that Brook; the Hamlet, at the delta or mouth of it, is as if built upon its TONGUE and into its GULLET: think how picturesque, in the November rains, for example!
"The road" one road, "from Dresden to Aussig, to Lobositz, Budin, Prag, runs up the river-brink (south brink); or, in our day, as Prag-Dresden Railway, thunders through those solitudes; strangely awakening their echoes; and inviting even the bewildered Tourist to reflect, if he could. The bewildered Tourist sees rock-walls heaven-high on both hands of him; River and he rushing on between, by law of gravitation, law of ennui (which are laws of Nature both), with a narrow strip of sky in full gallop overhead; and has little encouragement to reflect, except upon his own sorrows, and delirious circumstances, physical and moral. 'How much happier, were I lying in my bed!' thinks the bewildered Tourist;--does strive withal to admire the Picturesque, but with little success; notices the 'BASTEI (Bastion),' and other rigorously prescribed points of the Sublime and Beautiful,
Saxon Switzerland is not very high anywhere; 2,000 feet is a notable degree of height: but it is torn and tumbled into stone labyrinths, chasms and winding rock-walls, as few regions are. Grows pinewood, to the topmost height; pine-trees far aloft look quietly down upon you, over sheer precipices, on your intricate path. On the slopes of the Hills is grass enough; in the intervals are Villages and husbandries, are corn and milk for the laborious natives,--who depend mainly on quarrying, and pine-forest work: pines and free-stone, rafts of long slim pines, and big stone barges, are what one sees upon the River there. A Note, not very geological, says of it:--
"Elbe sweeps freely through this Country, for ages and aeons past; curling himself a little into snake-figure, and with increased velocity, but silent mostly, and trim to the edge, a fine flint- colored river;--though in aeons long anterior, it must have been a very different matter for torrents and water-power. The Country is one huge Block of Sandstone, so many square miles of that material; ribbed, channelled, torn and quarried, in this manner, by the ever- busy elements, for a million of Ages past! Chiefly by the Elbe himself, since he got to be a River, and became cosmic and personal; ceasing to be a mere watery chaos of Lakes and Deluges hereabouts. For the Sandstone was of various degrees of hardness; tenacious as marble some parts of it, soft almost as sand other parts. And the primordial diluviums and world-old torrents, great and small, rushing down from the Bohemian Highlands, from the Saxon Metal Mountains, with such storming, gurgling and swashing, have swept away the soft parts, and left the hard standing in this chaotic manner, and bequeathed it all to the Elbe, and the common frosts and rains of these human ages.
"Elbe has now a trim course; but Elbe too is busy quarrying and mining, where not artificially held in;--and you notice at every outlet of a Brook from the interior, north side and south side, how busy the Brook has been. Boring, grinding, undermining; much helped by the frosts, by the rains. AEons ago, the Brook was a lake, in the interior; but was every moment laboring to get out; till it has cut for itself that mountain gullet, or sheer-down chasm, and brought out with it an Alluvium or Delta,--on which, since Adam's time, human creatures have built a Hamlet. That is the origin, or unwritten history, of most hamlets and cultivated spots you fall in with here: they are the waste shavings of the Brook, working millions of years, for its own object of getting into the Elbe in level circumstances. Ploughed fields, not without fertility, are in the interior, if you ascend that Brook; the Hamlet, at the delta or mouth of it, is as if built upon its TONGUE and into its GULLET: think how picturesque, in the November rains, for example!
"The road" one road, "from Dresden to Aussig, to Lobositz, Budin, Prag, runs up the river-brink (south brink); or, in our day, as Prag-Dresden Railway, thunders through those solitudes; strangely awakening their echoes; and inviting even the bewildered Tourist to reflect, if he could. The bewildered Tourist sees rock-walls heaven-high on both hands of him; River and he rushing on between, by law of gravitation, law of ennui (which are laws of Nature both), with a narrow strip of sky in full gallop overhead; and has little encouragement to reflect, except upon his own sorrows, and delirious circumstances, physical and moral. 'How much happier, were I lying in my bed!' thinks the bewildered Tourist;--does strive withal to admire the Picturesque, but with little success; notices the 'BASTEI (Bastion),' and other rigorously prescribed points of the Sublime and Beautiful,