Page:Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842, and 1843 - Volume 1.djvu/287

 The path, ascending and descending over the rocks, winds at its side. Sometimes the fissure nearly meets overhead, and the sun can never shine on the stream below. There is a charm of novelty in the scene quite inexpressible. We penetrate Nature’s secret chambers, which she has adorned with the wildest caprice. Various ravines branch off from the main one, and become numerous and intricate, varied by huge caverns of strange shapes; some open to the sky, some dark and deep; there are little verdant spots in the midst, too, where the turf was green and velvetty, and invited us to rest. We were taken to the particular spots selected as most remarkable for the formation or grandeur of the rocks, or where cascades, reduced unhappily to a thread of water, were accustomed to scatter their spray abroad. The whole way, I must tell you, was one continued ascent, and this explains the wondrous view we gain when we emerge again into outer air.

At length we left the ravine, and entered a forest of firs. After traversing this we found ourselves, as if by magic, at a high elevation, and stood upon the Bastei or Bastion. This is a vast mass of rock, that rises 800 feet above the Elbe, in the depths and centre of which the rent was made which we had thridded. The uttermost edge projects far beyond the face of the precipice, and here we stood looking