said, by Charlemagne, who, remarking
the rapid disappearance of the snow on the slopes about Rudesheim,
declared his belief that fine wine might be grown there. Sending to
France for some plants, they were placed in the earth, and have ever
since yielded a grape worthy of their parentage, a grape still called
Orleans.

From this town the tourist may make a pleasant excursion to the
Niederwald,--having first given his attention to the history of
Rudesheim, once the seat of an imperial court held in the Nieder
Burg,--and scan its four ancient castles. Of these, one belonged for a
time to Prince Metternich, who, however, sold it to Count Ingelheim, its
present possessor; another is picturesquely posted at the upper part of
the town, and still retains some curious relics of the Bromser family,
its old possessors. A tradition still exists, telling how Hans Bromser,
being taken captive in Jerusalem, made a vow to Heaven that if released
he would dedicate his only daughter to the service of the Church.
Gaining his liberty soon afterward, he returned to the Rhine to find the
child he had left when he started for the Crusades grown to womanhood;
and he learned also that, secure of her father's sanction, she had
betrothed herself to a youthful knight. Love and duty well-nigh rent the
maiden's heart in twain, till love conquered, and she begged her stern
parent to relent. This he refused to do, and threatened her with a
father's curse should she marry.

Despairing, she threw herself into the Rhine, and her body floated
down-stream as far as Bishop Hatto's Mouse Tower, at Bingen. This gave
rise to another legend, that when the surface of the waters is troubled
it is caused by the uneasy spirit of Bromser's daughter, wrestling with
the dreadful fate to which she was driven.

[Illustration]

XVIII

LIMBURG

The cathedral of Limburg-on-Lahn, not farther from the juncture of the
Lahn and Rhine than is Frankfort-on-the-Main, may well be considered a
Rhine cathedral.

The Lahn is by no means so powerful a stream as is the Main or the
Neckar; nor is it either picturesque, or even important as a waterway.

It has this one virtue, however: it forms a setting to Limburg's
many-spired cathedral that is truly grand.

Limburg played a great part in the middle ages, and its origin goes far
back into antiquity. Under Drusus a _castellum_ was erected here, which
was destroyed by the Franks and the Alemanni.

The counts of the