Page:Karl Gjellerup - Minna, A novel - 1913.djvu/10

 it was, it had left upon me the impression of a rarely tender idyll, though, like most travellers, I had only seen it in passing, and then in the twilight, when coming down from the Bastei.

Towards noon, a few days later, I alighted at the little railway station, and walked past the fruit gardens down to the ferry. In this part the Elbe goes winding round cultivated land, which gradually rises into undulating country, dark with pine woods and overhung by rocks, while gently sloping down towards the river. Here lies Upper-Rathen with its substantial, if somewhat scattered farms, and a thin network of fruit trees spreads over the cornfields and green meadows. The opposite side is one long chain of mountains with but a single break in the middle, a small valley disclosing the unimportant village of Lower-Rathen, of which scarcely anything is to be seen but the two inns—the bare new one, and the overgrown old one—lying one on each side of the brook which runs sparkling into the river as it glides swiftly by. To the left of this valley rise the bluish-grey towering rocks of the Bastei, covered down towards the base with woods of pine and beech; these are succeeded by shining sandstone quarries, the most beautiful in the whole country, a series of lofty, yellow walls, some of which rise to a height of several hundred feet. In contrast to these, the quarries on the farther side of the village lie along the base of the hills like one unbroken wall of rock, above which rolls a sea of forests with Lilienstein floating therein—a gigantic man-of-war.

The ferry boat went slantingly, just like a dog, across the current that propelled it forward. It was fixed to a chain, with a barrel midway as float, the farther end of the chain being anchored far up the stream, and in order