les, and most frequented by strangers
by railroad and steamboat. The right bank is at first the only one that
calls for attention, dotted as it is with townlets, each nestled in
orchards, gardens and vineyards, with a church and steeple, and terraces
of odd, over-hanging houses; little stone arbors trellised with
grapevines; great crosses and statues of patron saints in the warm,
soft-toned red sandstone of the country; fishermen's taverns, with most
of the business done outside under the trees or vine-covered piazza;
little, busy wharfs and works, aping joyfully the bustle of large
seaports, and succeeding in miniature; and perhaps a burgomaster's
garden, where that portly and pleasant functionary does not disdain to
keep a tavern and serve his customers himself, as at Walluf.

[Illustration: JUDENGASSE AT FRANKFORT.]

At Rauenthal (a "valley" placed on high hills) we find the last new
claimant to the supremacy among Rhine wines, at least since the Paris
Exhibition, when the medal of honor was awarded to Rauenthal, which has
ended in bringing many hundreds of curious connoisseurs to test the
merits of the grape where it grows. Now comes a whole host of villages
on either side of the river, famous through their wines--Steinberg, the
"golden beaker;" Scharfenstein, whose namesake castle was the refuge of
the warlike archbishops of Mayence, the stumbling-block of the
archbishops of Treves, called "the Lion of Luxembourg," and lastly the
prey of the terrible Swedes, who in German stories play the part of
Cossacks and Bashi-Bazouks; Marcobrunnen, with its classical-looking
ruin of a fountain hidden among vineyards; Hattenheim, Hallgarten,
Graefenberg; and Eberbach, formerly an abbey, known for its "cabinet"
wine, the hall-mark of those times, and its legends of Saint Bernard,
for whom a boar ploughed a circle with his tusks to show the spot where
the saint should build a monastery, and afterward tossed great stones
thither for the foundation, while angels helped to build the upper
walls. Eberbach is rather deserted than ruined. It was a good deal
shattered in the Peasants' War at the time of the Reformation, when the
insurgents emptied the huge cask in which the whole of the Steinberg
wine-harvest was stored; but since 1803, when it was made over to the
neighboring wine-growers, it has remained pretty well unharmed; and its
twelfth-century chapel, full of monuments; its refectory, now the
press-house, with its columns and