dry. When its surface appears to the light of day, the
vineyard owner hails it as a sign of good vintage.

In proof of the quality of the wines of Bacharach, it is said that Pope
Pius II. used every year to have a great tun of it brought to Rome for
his special use, and that the Emperor Wenceslas granted their freedom to
the citizens of Nuremberg in return for four tuns of the wine of
Bacharach. To-day Bacharach is, with Cologne, the great wine centre of
the Rhine valley.

Asmanhausen, a few miles up the river, is the central mart for the red
wines of the Rhine. Near Asmanhausen is Ehrenfels, where the Archbishops
of Mayence had a chateau in the thirteenth century. The chateau is still
there, but it is nothing more than a magnificent ruin.

[Illustration: _Bishop Hatto's Mouse Tower_]

Opposite Ehrenfels is Bingen, with its Maeuseturm. The chief sentimental
memory of Bingen is unquestionably the legend of Bishop Hatto and his
"Mouse Tower on the Rhine."

The legend of Hatto, versified by Southey, has stamped the memory of the
Mouse Tower and its associations so indelibly upon the mind that it
overshadows in interest all else in the vicinity.

"'Tis the safest place in Germany;
The walls are high, and the shores are steep,
And the stream is strong and the water deep."

How the rats came and--

"...whetted their teeth against the stones
And how they picked the Bishop's bones"--

is an old story with which children have been regaled for generations
past.

The great white "Mouse Tower" stands to-day on its tiny island in the
middle of the waters of the Rhine, between Bingen and Ehrenfels, to
perpetuate the story, while its ruined walls look down, as they always
have, on the steady flow of the Rhine water, making its way from the
place of its birth in the Canton of Grisons to the cold waters of the
German ocean off the coast of Holland.

_Rudesheim_

Rudesheim, but a small town of less than three thousand inhabitants, is
noted for its wines and its ruins. Its church, though a
fifteenth-century edifice of more than ordinary beauty,--if we except
its nondescript spire,--comes decidedly last in the city's list of
attractions.

The remains of the four chateaux in the neighbourhood are the chief
object of the casual tourist.

The town is the centre of a vineyard, the grapes being grown in great
profusion near it. The favourable nature of the locality for
grape-growing was discovered, it is