Page:Karl Gjellerup - Minna, A novel - 1913.djvu/28

 sometimes as ruins in them, so that in this way the rocks form more of the excavated than of the elevated part. For this reason one is at first astonished to find a stretch of rich verdure winding up over the uneven, stony surface of a steep rock, as a velvet saddle on an elephant, and still more astonished when, after having passed through waving cornfields, and on looking down a precipice, one suddenly sees a wild tract of rugged rocks with numerous crags and pinnacles, and sandstone columns a hundred feet high.

At first these contrasts are almost irritating, but as time goes on they grow upon one. On the top of this plateau, with the mountainous land beneath, one finds, again, these solitary, towering rocks that give the land its characteristic physiognomy, which is, to tell the truth at the expense of the aesthetic, a rather warty one. For, seen at some distance, these stones, whether called Kingstone, Popestone, Lilystone, or what not, are really more like gigantic warts than anything else, not even excepting the Schneeberg with its two thousand feet and its far-reaching crest. A few, as for instance the Winter Mountains, vary from this type, but they are just on the frontier, and as one comes into Bohemia a more ordinary mountain aspect is to be seen. To be quite correct the Schneeberg is situated in Bohemia, and the boundary is not altogether so sharply defined as is the quality of the coffee, which is so excellent in the first Bohemian hamlets that one might imagine oneself already at Carlsbad; while, on the Saxonian side, one drinks the famous "Bliemchen-Kaffee," a decoction which has taken its name from the fact that through it one can see the little flower painted at the bottom of the cup.

Only that afternoon I had partaken of the usual quantity