Page:The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Volume 5.djvu/40

26 on a hill. Numerous little pleasure-woods, a preserve for tame and wild pheasants, and the relics of many similar arrangements, showed how pleasant this little residence must formerly have been.

Yet all these views were surpassed by the prospect which met the eye, when, from the neighbouring Baschberg, one looked over the perfectly paradisiacal region. This height, wholly heaped together out of different kinds of shells, attracted my attention for the first time to such documents of antiquity: I had never before seen them together in so great a mass. Yet the curious eye soon turned itself exclusively to the landscape. You stand on the last landward mountain-point; toward the north lies a fruitful plain, interspersed with little forests, and bounded by a stern row of mountains, that stretches itself westward toward Zabere, where the episcopal palace and the Abbey of St. John, lying a league beyond it, may be plainly recognised. Thence the eye follows the more and more vanishing chain of the Vosges toward the south. If you turn to the northeast, you see the castle of Lichtenberg upon a rock; and toward the southeast the eye has the boundless plain of Alsace to scrutinise, which, afar off, withdraws itself from the sight in the more and more misty landscape, until at last the Suabian mountains melt away like shadows into the horizon.

Already, in my limited wanderings through the world, I had remarked how important it is in travelling to ascertain the course of the waters, and even to ask with respect to the smallest brook, whither in reality it runs. One thus acquires a general survey of every stream-region in which one happens to be, a conception of the heights and depths which bear relation to each other, and by these leading lines, which assist the con-