pper end of the
street, and even around the corner, others hastened to join the
whispering, wondering crowd. How could we explain? It was utterly
impossible; so we came quickly and quietly away; but whether this house
had ever been a church, whether the pilgrim fathers ever saw it, or
indeed whether there ever were any pilgrim fathers, are questions I
cannot undertake to answer.

CHAPTER XII.

THE RHINE AND RHENISH PRUSSIA.

First glimpse of the Rhine.--Cologne and the
Cathedral.--"Shosef in ter red coat."--St. Ursula
and the eleven thousand virgins.--Up the Rhine to
Bonn.--The German students.--Rolandseck.--A search
for a resting-place.--Our Dutch friend and his
Malays.--The story of Hildegund.--A quiet
Sabbath.--Our Dutch friend's
reply.--Coblentz.--The bridge of
boats.--Ehrenbreitstein, over the river.--A
scorching day upon the Rhine.--Romance under
difficulties.--Mayence.--Frankfort.--Heidelberg.--The
ruined castle.--Baden-Baden.--A glimpse at the
gambling.--The new, and the old "Schloss."--The
Black Forest.--Strasbourg.--The mountains.

WE had made a sweep through Belgium and Holland, intending to return by
way of the Rhine and Switzerland. Accordingly, in leaving Amsterdam, we
struck across the country to Arnhem, where we found a pleasant hotel
near the station, outside of the town. Here we spent the night in order
to break the monotony of the ride to Cologne. After climbing stairs to
gain our room, wide, but so perpendicular that we were really afraid to
descend by them, we had, from a rickety, upper piazza, our first glimpse
of the Rhine, winding through flat, green meadows, with hardly more than
a suggestion of hills in the distance. There is nothing of interest to
detain one at Arnhem. The guide-book informed us that it was the scene
of Sir Philip Sidney's death; but no one in the hotel seemed ever to
have heard of that gentle knight--_sans peur et sans reproche_.

We reached Cologne at noon the next day. The road makes a _detour_
through the plain, so that, for some time before gaining it, we could
see the city nestling under the wings of the great cathedral. How can I
tell you anything about it? If I say that it is five times the length of
any church you know, and that the towers, when completed, are to be the
same height as the length, will my words brin