thers, would have her
way. We became exceedingly weary, and were fain, on reaching a wood
near the summit, to sit down and rest.

Early as it was when our journey began, we soon found that we had no
chance of getting the road to ourselves. Many wayfarers were already
abroad, among whom were several women, loaded like jackasses, with
enormous panniers filled with I know not what species of evidently
heavy goods. The tasks, indeed, which custom has imposed upon the lower
classes of women in Germany, create in a stranger extreme surprise, if
not indignation. I have spoken of the effects of this ungallant
arrangement as they display themselves in Saxony; and I am bound to add
that, in Bohemia, the same system is pursued, and the very same results
produced. Besides a large portion of the field-work, such as hoeing,
weeding, digging, planting, &c., it has fallen to the Bohemian women's
share to be the bearers of all burdens; whether fire-wood be needed
from the forest, grass, butter, eggs, and other wares required in the
market-place, or trusses of hay lie abroad in the fields which it is
necessary to fetch home. The inevitable consequence is, that, generally
speaking, a woman ceases to have even a trace of youth about her by the
time she has passed thirty. At three or four-and-twenty, she becomes
brown and wrinkled, a year or two later, she loses her teeth, and last
of all comes the goitre, which, by utterly destroying the symmetry of
her form, leaves her, at thirty, little better than a wreck. As to the
really old folks, the grandams and maiden aunts of the community, these
are, at all moments, in a condition to play with effect the characters
of Macbeth's witches; and when, as not unfrequently happens, they judge
it expedient to go about bareheaded, the resemblance which they bear to
the respectable individuals just alluded to, is complete. Yet in youth,
not a few of the girls are extremely pretty; which makes you the more
regret that the customs of the country, by subjecting them to such
severe hardships, should rob them of their bloom before their time.

Having rested under the shadow of our friendly grove sufficiently long
to permit my making a rough sketch of the valley beneath us, we resumed
our march, and rounding the hill, opened out a new prospect, scarcely
inferior in point of beauty, though widely different in kind, from that
which had passed from our gaze. We looked down upon a sort of basin,
fertile, and culti