bubbles and froths in
miniature whirlpools as we near what is called the "Bingen Hole."

As we have passed the mouth of the Stein and recollected the rhyme of
Schroedter in his _King Wine's Triumph_--

[Illustration: RUeDESHEIM.]

Wreathed in vines and crowned with reeds comes the Rhine,
And at his side with merry dance comes the Main,
While the third with his steady steps is all of stone (Stein),
And both Main and Stein are prime ministers to the Lord Rhine--

so now we peer up one of the clefts in the rocks and see the Nahe
ploughing its way along to meet the great river. Just commanding the
mouth is Klopp Castle, and not far warlike Bingen, a rich burgher-city,
plundered and half destroyed in every war from those of the fourteenth
to those of the eighteenth century, while Klopp too claims to have been
battered and bruised even in the thirteenth century, but is better known
as the scene of the emperor Henry IV.'s betrayal to the Church
authorities by his son, who treacherously invited him to visit him here
by night. A little way up the river Nahe, where the character of the
people changes from the lightheartedness of the Rhine proper to a
steadiness and earnestness somewhat in keeping with the sterner and more
mountainous aspect of the country, is Kreuznach, (or "Crossnear"), now a
bathing-resort, and once a village founded by the first Christian
missionaries round the first cross under whose shadow they preached the
gospel. Sponheim Castle, once the abode of Trithemius, or Abbot John of
Trittenheim, a famous chronicler and scholar, reminds us of the brave
butcher of Kreuznach, Michael Mort, whose faithfulness to his lawful
lord when beset by pretenders to his title in his own family won for the
guild of butchers certain privileges which they have retained ever
since; and Rheingrafenstein, where the ruins are hardly distinguishable
from the tossed masses of porphyry rock on which they are perched, tells
us the story of Boos von Waldeck's wager with the lord of the castle to
drink a courier's top-boot full of Rhine wine at one draught--a feat
which he is said to have successfully accomplished, making himself
surely a fit companion for Odin in Walhalla; but his reward on earth was
more substantial, for he won thereby the village of Hueffelsheim and all
its belongings. In a less romantic situation stands Ebernburg, so called
from the boar which during a siege the hungry but indomitable defenders
of th