Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/246

10, 1860.] Semmering, and 1308 feet above the level of the sea, the railway ascends the mountain by a succession of windings, which disclose a continual change of the most beautiful and romantic scenery, until in something more than twenty-four miles it has gained an elevation of 1480 feet. From this altitude it begins to descend towards the south, and often when it enters a valley terminating in a cul-de-sac, after turning the head of the glen it runs back for more than a mile parallel with the line it pursued on the other side of the valley, and continues till it finds an opening to the south; where again it is perhaps compelled to make a similar retrograde movement in search of an outlet; passing in its course through no less than fifteen tunnels, besides some most extraordinary galleries cut in the face of the precipices, and long corridors with rows of arches looking out from the rock upon the deep valleys below. In these valleys, rich in cultivation and pasture, and sheltered by forests which clothe the mountains to their summits, are seen here and there villages, scattered houses, convents, and châteaux; while on the towering crags above, perched like eagles’ nests on the rocks, whose natural sides cannot be distinguished from the grey masonry by which they are surmounted, rises many a noble ruin frowning in the silent grandeur of ages gone!

Such, especially, is the castle of Klamm, which is situated in the centre of this mountain-pass, on the summit of the rocky Henbachkogels, where it has stood since the eleventh century, through all the wars, and revolutions, and tempests of seven-hundred years undilapidated, until, in 1801, it was struck by lightning, and reduced to a ruin. Its position is wonderful: hanging over the precipices on which it is built, so that from its projecting turrets a pebble may be dropped into the green valley below, where the cattle and their herdsmen appear like emmets on the grass. Wild, beautiful abode! and wild and daring must have been the man who first stood upon its aerial bastion, and resolved to build his eagle dwelling on that rock. A tide of overwhelming feeling rushes through the mind, as we gaze from those narrow loopholes, or wide-arched windows, and feel that this place was once inhabited by the noble and the beautiful; that its hall once resounded with all the mirth, and happiness, and splendour of social life and princely banquets, but in a pile hanging like an eagle’s nest upon the pinnacle of an isolated rock in the centre of a mountain range, some of whose peaks rise five, six, and nearly 7000 feet above the plane of the Mediterranean. Even the point of view from which the above sketch was taken, is far above the ordinary haunts of man, at nearly 3000 feet above the level of the sea, upon an eminence