vine, producing by their combinations
as glorious and diversified a panorama as it has ever been my good
fortune to behold. And yet I am not sure that even this scene, striking
as it seemed to be, was not cast into the shade, when, after dragging
our weary limbs across the hollow, and gaining the opposite ridge, we
opened out a prospect, narrower to be sure, but far surpassing, in
rugged grandeur, any on which we had as yet gazed. Another deep ravine
lay beneath us, dark with the forest which covered its base; beyond
which uprose a chain of jagged and pine-clad rocks, resembling in their
forms the fragments of some huge castle, or rather of an enormous city
of castles, shaken by an earthquake into ruins. Even now I am not
satisfied that among these tall and beetling crags there were no
remnants of man's handiwork; for the gloom of twilight was upon them
when I saw them first, and ere I had ceased to gaze it had well nigh
deepened into night.

Extreme fatigue is a serious damper to enthusiasm of any sort, and keen
as our relish of nature's more colossal forms might be, I am not sure
that we would not have exchanged, at that moment, the view of these
wonders, with all the train of thoughts arising out of them, for the
interior of a snug room in a village inn, and a mess of calves' flesh,
with a bottle of wine to drink after it. Of our village inn we as yet,
however, saw no symptoms; and wearily and slowly step followed step,
without, as it seemed, bringing us nearer to the object of our wishes.
At last, just as darkness had fairly set in, we met, at the brow of a
hill, a rustic, and received from him the gratifying intelligence that
Marchovides lay about a quarter of an hour's walk distant, in the
valley beyond. "And the gasthof," cried we, "what sort of a place is
it? Can we get supper, and beds, and a bottle of wine?" "Oh, yes,"
replied the countryman, "it is a capital quarter. Wine, and every other
thing that is good, may be had there for the asking." "This is as it
should be," said we one to another, while recalling our energies for a
final effort we hitched our packs higher upon our shoulders, and
quickened our pace.

We had not walked far along the descent when, through the thickening
gloom, numerous lights glancing from cottage windows made us aware that
we were approaching Marchovides. We made for one of the first of these
dwellings, inquired for the inn, had its situation accurately described
to us, and hurried