Page:Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home (Volume 1).djvu/194

Rh rich drapery. The peasants, women as well as men, scale the precipices to dress their vines, and every particle of manure is carried up on their shoulders.

In the steepest places the vines are put in baskets as the only way of retaining the soil about them. For the most part the vineyards are a series of terraces or steps (we have counted from twenty to thirty) covering the face of the hill. Each terrace is supported by a wall from five to ten feet high. Murray tells us the Rhineland vinedresser is not rich, but generally the possessor of the vineyard he cultivates. What a beautiful gift of Providence is the vine to the patient, contented tiller of ground that would produce nothing but this! and this "makes glad the heart of man."

The steamer carried us past village after village most beautiful as seen in passing; but again, my dear C., I warn you not to let this, the greenest word in memory, call before you wide streets, shaded courtyards, ample space, and all rural luxuries. A village here is a mass of wretched dwellings stuck against mouldering walls, where human existence, in point of comfort, is nearly on a level with the brutes; in fact, the same roof often shelters all the live-stock, from the master to his ass. The streets are scarcely wide enough for a carriage to pass, and the lanes are but a flea's leap across—a measurement that naturally occurs here. But mark the compensating blessing! the denizens of these dreary places, steeped to the very lips in poverty, are a smiling, kindly people.