History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 19 [38]
known. A Block of Knolls memorable ever since.
"To all appearance: it was once some big Island or chain of Islands in the Oder deluges: it is still cut with sudden hollows,--KUHGRUND (Cow-Hollow), TIEFE WEG (Deep Way), and westernmost of all, and most important for us here, HOHLE GRUND (Big Hollow, let us call it; 'LOUDON'S Hollow' people subsequently called it);--and is everywhere strangely tumbled up into knolls blunt or sharp, the work of primeval Oder in his rages. In its highest knolls,--of which let readers note specially the Spitzberg, the Muhlberg, the Judenberg,--it rises nowhere to 150 feet; perhaps the general height of it may be about 100. On each side of it, especially on the north, the Country is of most intricate character: bushy, scraggy, with brooklets or muddy oozings wandering about, especially with a thing called the HUNERFLIESS (Hen-Floss), which springs in the eastern woods, and has inconceivable difficulty to get into Oder,--if it get at all! This was a sore Floss to Friedrich to-morrow. Hen-Floss struggles, painfully meandering and oozing, along the northern side (sometimes close, sometimes not) of our Chain of Knolls: along the south side of it (in our time, through the middle of it) goes the Highway to Reppen ["From that Highway will his attack come!" thought the Russians, always till to-day]: on the north, to Leissow, to Trettin," where Friedrich is now on survey, "go various wheel-tracks, but no firm road. A most intricate unlovely Country. Withered bent-grasses, heath, perhaps gorse, and on both sides a great deal of straggling Forest-wood, reaching eastward, and especially southward, for many miles.
"For the rest," to our ill-luck in this place, "the Battlefield of Kunersdorf has had a peculiar fate in the world; that of being blown away by the winds! The then scene of things exists no longer; the descriptions in the Old Books are gone hopelessly irrecognizable. In our time, there is not anywhere a tract more purely of tumbled sand, than all this between Kunersdorf and Dam Vorstadt; and you judge, without aid of record or tradition, that it is greatly altered for the worse since Friedrich's time,--some rabbit-colony, or other the like insignificancy, eating out the roots, till all vegetation died, and the wind got hold and set it dancing;--and that, in 1759, when Russian human beings took it for a Camp, it must have been at least coherent, more or less; covered, held together by some film of scrubby vegetation; not blowing about in every wind as now! Kunersdorf stands with its northern end pushed into that KUHGRUND (Cow-Hollow); which must then have been a grassy place. Eastward of Kunersdorf the ground has still some skin of peat, and sticks together: but westward, all that three miles, it is a mere tumult of sand-hills, tumbled about in every direction (so diligent have the conies been, and then the winds); no gullet, or definite cut or hollow, now traceable anywhere, but only an endless imbroglio of twisted sand-heaps and sand-hollows, which continually alter in the wind-storms. Sand wholly, and--except the strong paved Highway that now runs through it (to Reppen, Meseritz and the Polish Frontier, and is strongly paved till it get through Kunersdorf)--chaotic wholly; a scene of heaped barrenness and horror, not to be matched but in Sahara; the features of the Battle quite blown away, and indecipherable in our time.
"A hundred years ago, it would have some tattered skin,--of peat, of heather and dwarf whins, with the sand cropping out only here and there. So one has to figure it in Soltikof's day,--before the conies ruined it. Which was not till within the last sixty years, as appears. Kriele's Book (in 1801) still gives no hint of change: the KUHGRUND, which now has nothing but dry sand for the most industrious ruminant, is still a place of succulence and herbage in Kriele's time; 'Deep Way,' where 'at one point two carts could not pass,' was not yet blown out of existence, but has still 'a Well in it' for Kriele; HOHLE GRUND (since called Loudon's Hollow), with the Jew Hill and
"To all appearance: it was once some big Island or chain of Islands in the Oder deluges: it is still cut with sudden hollows,--KUHGRUND (Cow-Hollow), TIEFE WEG (Deep Way), and westernmost of all, and most important for us here, HOHLE GRUND (Big Hollow, let us call it; 'LOUDON'S Hollow' people subsequently called it);--and is everywhere strangely tumbled up into knolls blunt or sharp, the work of primeval Oder in his rages. In its highest knolls,--of which let readers note specially the Spitzberg, the Muhlberg, the Judenberg,--it rises nowhere to 150 feet; perhaps the general height of it may be about 100. On each side of it, especially on the north, the Country is of most intricate character: bushy, scraggy, with brooklets or muddy oozings wandering about, especially with a thing called the HUNERFLIESS (Hen-Floss), which springs in the eastern woods, and has inconceivable difficulty to get into Oder,--if it get at all! This was a sore Floss to Friedrich to-morrow. Hen-Floss struggles, painfully meandering and oozing, along the northern side (sometimes close, sometimes not) of our Chain of Knolls: along the south side of it (in our time, through the middle of it) goes the Highway to Reppen ["From that Highway will his attack come!" thought the Russians, always till to-day]: on the north, to Leissow, to Trettin," where Friedrich is now on survey, "go various wheel-tracks, but no firm road. A most intricate unlovely Country. Withered bent-grasses, heath, perhaps gorse, and on both sides a great deal of straggling Forest-wood, reaching eastward, and especially southward, for many miles.
"For the rest," to our ill-luck in this place, "the Battlefield of Kunersdorf has had a peculiar fate in the world; that of being blown away by the winds! The then scene of things exists no longer; the descriptions in the Old Books are gone hopelessly irrecognizable. In our time, there is not anywhere a tract more purely of tumbled sand, than all this between Kunersdorf and Dam Vorstadt; and you judge, without aid of record or tradition, that it is greatly altered for the worse since Friedrich's time,--some rabbit-colony, or other the like insignificancy, eating out the roots, till all vegetation died, and the wind got hold and set it dancing;--and that, in 1759, when Russian human beings took it for a Camp, it must have been at least coherent, more or less; covered, held together by some film of scrubby vegetation; not blowing about in every wind as now! Kunersdorf stands with its northern end pushed into that KUHGRUND (Cow-Hollow); which must then have been a grassy place. Eastward of Kunersdorf the ground has still some skin of peat, and sticks together: but westward, all that three miles, it is a mere tumult of sand-hills, tumbled about in every direction (so diligent have the conies been, and then the winds); no gullet, or definite cut or hollow, now traceable anywhere, but only an endless imbroglio of twisted sand-heaps and sand-hollows, which continually alter in the wind-storms. Sand wholly, and--except the strong paved Highway that now runs through it (to Reppen, Meseritz and the Polish Frontier, and is strongly paved till it get through Kunersdorf)--chaotic wholly; a scene of heaped barrenness and horror, not to be matched but in Sahara; the features of the Battle quite blown away, and indecipherable in our time.
"A hundred years ago, it would have some tattered skin,--of peat, of heather and dwarf whins, with the sand cropping out only here and there. So one has to figure it in Soltikof's day,--before the conies ruined it. Which was not till within the last sixty years, as appears. Kriele's Book (in 1801) still gives no hint of change: the KUHGRUND, which now has nothing but dry sand for the most industrious ruminant, is still a place of succulence and herbage in Kriele's time; 'Deep Way,' where 'at one point two carts could not pass,' was not yet blown out of existence, but has still 'a Well in it' for Kriele; HOHLE GRUND (since called Loudon's Hollow), with the Jew Hill and