Page:Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home (Volume 1).djvu/202

Rh NIEDERWALD.

Friday, Rudesheim.—This morning we set off on an excursion to the Niederwald, the "Echo," "The Temple," "The Enchanted Cave," and the Rossel. Now, let your fancy surround you with the atmosphere of our cool, bright September days, and present the images of your friends, mounted on asses, winding up steep paths among these rich Rudesheim vineyards, which produce some of the finest wines on the Rhine. See our four esel-meisters slowly gossiping on after us, and our path crossed, ever and anon, with peasant women emerging from the vineyards with baskets on their heads, piled with grape-cuttings, and weeds to feed the asses, pigs, or—children! See us passing through the beech and oaken wood of the Niederwald, and coming out upon the "Temple" to look down on the ruins of the Castle of Bromser, amid a world of beauty, and think upon its old Jephthalord who, when a captive among the Saracens, vowed, if he returned, to devote his only daughter Gisela to the church—of poor Gisela, who had devoted herself to a human divinity, and, finding her crusading father inexorable, threw herself from the tower of the castle into the river. With the clear eye of peasant faith, you may see now, of a dark and gusty night, the pale form of this modern Sappho,, and you may hear her wailings somewhere about Hatto's Tower.

Next see us emerging from our woodland path, and taken possession of by a very stout woodland