(Schnee Eifel), contracted by the speech of
the country into Schneifel.

The last is the most curious, the most dreary, the least visited. Walls
of sharp rocks rise up over eight hundred feet high round some of its
sunken lakes--one is called the Powder Lake--and the level above this
abyss stretches out in moors and desolate downs, peopled with herds of
lean sheep, and marked here and there by sepulchral, gibbet-looking
signposts, shaped like a rough T and set in a heap of loose stones. It
is a great contrast to turn aside from this landscape and look on the
smiling villages and pretty wooded scenery of the valley of the Mosel
proper; the long lines of handsome, healthy women washing their linen on
the banks; the old ferryboats crossing by the help of antique
chain-and-rope contrivances; the groves of old trees, with broken walls
and rude shrines, reminding one of Southern Italy and her olives and
ilexes; and the picturesque houses, in Kochem, in Daun, in Travbach, in
Bernkastel, which, however untiring one may be as a sightseer, hardly
warrant one as a writer to describe and re-describe their beauties.
Kluesserath, however, we must mention, because its straggling figure has
given rise to a local proverb--"As long as Kluesserath;" and Neumagen,
because of the legend of Constantine, who is said to have seen the cross
of victory in the heavens at this place, as well as at Sinzig on the
Rhine, and, as the more famous legend tells us, at the Pons Milvium over
the Tiber.

The last glance we take at the beauties of this neighborhood is from the
mouth of the torrent-river Eltz as it dashes into the Eifel, washing the
rock on which stands the castle of Eltz. The building and the family are
an exception in the history of these lands; both exist to this day, and
are prosperous and undaunted, notwithstanding all the efforts of
enemies, time and circumstances to the contrary. The strongly-turreted
wall runs from the castle till it loses itself in the rock, and the
building has a home-like inhabited, complete look; which, in virtue of
the quaint irregularity and magnificent natural position of the castle,
standing guard over the foaming Eltz, does not take from its romantic
appearance, as preservation or restoration too often does.

Not far from Coblenz, and past the island of Nonnenwerth, is the old
tenth-century castle of Sayn, which stood until the Thirty Years' War,
and below it, quiet, comfortable, large, but unpretending, li