A July Holiday in Saxony, Bohemia, and Silesia

The Sprudel is the hottest of the springs, scalding hot, in fact, marking a temperature of 167 deg. Fahrenheit: hence the attendant Naiads—here a couple of strong-armed women—make use of a cup fixed to one end of a staff for filling the glasses. When a visitor approaches, the staff is held out to receive the glass; and after a plunge into the steaming jet, is handed back to the expectant drinker, who, taking his glass from the cup, swallows the contents at pleasure—if he can. The drinkers were but few when I came up, for ten o'clock was nigh; stragglers, who having arrived late, were sipping their last glasses—some not without a shudder. While the dose cooled, they examined the heads of walking-sticks, snuff-boxes, seals, and other specimens of Sprudelstein, on sale at a stall; or the time-tables and advertisement photographs hanging about the colonnade. The Naiads, in the interval, emptied ladles full of the water into stone-bottles, which a man rapidly corked in a noisy machine.

The waste water flows away along a wooden shoot to the river, where it sends small light wreaths of steam floating about on the surface. But I saw nothing at all like what has been often described as a cloud of steam perpetually hovering above the Sprudel, visible from afar. Regarded near at hand, or from a distance, there is no cloud visible in July, whatever may be the case in the cool months.

The quantity of water poured out every day by the Sprudel alone is estimated at two million gallons. Multiplied by 365, it becomes truly amazing. In this quantity, as shown by Gilbert, a German chemist, ten thousand tons of Glauber salt, and fifteen thousand tons of carbonate of soda are thrown up in a year. And this has been going on from immemorial ages, the waters depositing calcareous matter in their outflow, which has slowly formed a crust over the vast boiling reservoir beneath. And on this crust Carlsbad is built.

The constituents of all the springs, as proved by analyses, are identical with those of the Sprudel—soda in the form of carbonate, Glauber salt, and common salt; carbonic acid gas, and traces of iron and iodine. Bitumen is also found in a notable quantity, and a peculiar soapy substance, a species of animal matter, the cause, perhaps, of the cadaverous flavour already mentioned. The water, which when first caught is bright and clear, becomes turbid if left to cool, and throws down a pale-brown sediment. Ehrenberg, the celebrated microscopist of Berlin, who has examined specimens of this sediment under his microscope, declares it to be composed of fossil animalcules inconceivably minute; these animalcules being a portion of the material out of which Nature builds up the solid strata of the globe. Some patients have feared to drink the water because of the concreting property; but the medical authorities assure that in this respect it produces no injurious effect on the animal economy. Shopkeepers turn it to profit, and offer you fruits, flowers, plants, and other objects, petrified by the Sprudel water.

The roof of the colonnade above the spring is discoloured by the ascending steam; and standing on the bridge you can see how the wall is incrusted with calcareous matter, as, also, the big hump swelling up from the bed of the stream—a smooth ochreous coat, brightened in places by amber, in others darkened into a rich brown, or dyed with shades of green. This concretion is the Sprudelstein, or Sprudel-stone, noticed above; firm and hard in texture, and susceptible of a beautiful polish. A portion of the waste water is led into an adjoining building, where it undergoes evaporation to obtain the constituent salts in a dry state for exportation. From the other shoot, as it falls into the river, supplies are constantly dipped by the townsfolk, who use it to cook their eggs, to scald pork and poultry, and other purposes. All day long you may see women filling and carrying away on their shoulders big bucketfuls of the steaming water. Notwithstanding this constant inflow of hot water, the Teple appears to agree with fish, for I saw numbers swimming about in good condition but a short distance lower down. As a stream, it adds little to the salubrity of Carlsbad, for it is shallow, sluggish in places, and tainted by noisome drainage. Another cause of offence to the nostrils exists in what is so often complained of on the Continent, the obtrusive situation of the latrinæ at the principal springs. Only in England are such matters properly cared for.

In 1809, and for ten years thereafter, the Sprudel ceased to flow, and the water broke through at a spot some fifty feet distant, to which the name Hygieas Quelle was given. Here it continued to play till 1819, when it reappeared at the former source, and from that date there has been no interruption in the copious discharge of the Sprudel. The underground action is at times so powerful as to rend the crust and form new openings, and these, if large, have to be stopped, to prevent the loss of the springs. The yellow hump mentioned as swelling up from the river's bed, is nothing but a thick mass of masonry, braced together by iron bars, covering a great rent through which the waters once boiled up from below. Similar outbreaks occurred in 1713, and again fourteen years later, when attempts were made to ascertain the depth of the great subterranean reservoir by splicing poles together to a length of one hundred and eighty feet, but neither bottom nor wall could be touched in any direction. The hills around are of granite, containing mica and pyrites, and one of them, the Hirschsprung, is said to be the source of all the Carlsbad springs. Their bases come near together, and it is easy to imagine a huge cavern formed between them descending deep down into the bowels of the earth.

As regards the efficacy of the Carlsbad waters, let us hear Dr. Granville, an authority on the subject: "They exert their principal sanative action," he says, "1st, on all chronic affections which depend on debility of the digestive organs, accompanied by the accumulation of improper secretions; 2ndly, on all obstructions, particularly of the abdomen, which, as Becher, the oracle of Carlsbad, observes, they resolve and disperse; 3rdly, on the acrimony of the blood, which they correct, alter, evacuate, or drive towards the extremities and the surface of the body; 4thly, on calculous and gravelly deposits; 5thly, on many occult and serious disorders, the nature of which is not readily ascertained until after the partial use of the waters, such as tic doloreux, spasms, rheumatisms, and gout."

As if here were not virtues sufficient, the Doctor proceeds: "My own experience warrants me in commending the Carlsbad waters in all obstinate cases of induration, tumefaction, tenderness, and sluggish action of the liver; in imperfect or suppressed gout; in paralysis, dependent on the stomach, and not fulness of blood in the head; in cases of tic and nervous disorders; finally, in obstructions of the glands of the mesentery, and distended state of the splenetic vessels." The effect on stones in the bladder is almost magical, so promptly are they polished, reduced, rendered friable, and expelled, leaving the patient a happy example of perfect cure.

"It is the despondent," to quote once more from the Doctor, "the dejected, misanthropic, fidgetty, pusillanimous, irritable, outrageous, morose, sulky, weak-minded, whimsical, and often despairing hypochondriac—for he is all these, and each in turn—made so by continued indigestion, by obstinate and unremitting gout, by affections of the nerves of sympathy and of the gastric region, and by other equally active causes, that Carlsbad seems pre-eminently to favour." After reading this, the wonder is, not that the visitors number from five to six thousand in the course of the season, but that they are not ten times as many.

The Doctor finds nothing nauseous in the taste of the water. "Once arrived in the stomach," he says, "it produces an exhilarating sensation, which spreads itself to the intestinal canal generally." To him I leave the responsibility of this statement; for, preferring to let well alone, I sipped by spoonfuls only, and can therefore bring no testimony from my own experience. The practice of drinking the waters has almost set aside the once exclusive practice of bathing; but baths are always to be had, as well of mud and vapour as of the water of the springs.

Now, after this stroll through the town, let us take a wider survey. As we follow the street down the right bank, we see parties setting off in carriages for excursions to the neighbourhood, and rows of vehicles in the open places ticketed, Return to Marienbad, to Eger, to Töplitz, to Zwickau, and the like, and drivers on the alert for what your London cab-driver calls "a job." A short distance beyond the Morgenstern a path zigzags gradually up the hill and brings you soon under the shade of trees, and to many little nooks and sheltered seats contrived for delightful repose. One remote bower, apparently but little frequented, is inscribed, Care's Rest: make thyself happy. A little farther, and crossing a carriage-road, we come to a temple where you may have another rest, and enjoy at the same time the opening panorama. From hence the paths zigzag onwards to the top of the Dreikreuzberg—Three-Cross Hill—by easy shady slopes, which even a short-winded patient may ascend, while those with strong legs may shorten the distance by the steep cut-offs. An agreeable surprise awaits you at the top: a large, well-kept garden, gay and fragrant with flowers, surrounded by arbours of clipped fir, and a graceful screen of trees, while at one side stands a spacious Restauration—all clean and cheerful of aspect. From an elevated platform, or from the arched recesses on the terrace in front of the garden, you see all Carlsbad and the hilly region around.

Now you see how singularly crooked is the narrow valley in which the town is built; how the white houses gleam from the steep green sides of the farther hills, and straggle away to the wooded hollow at the head of the valley, from whence the river issues in a shining curve. In and out flows the stream past the church, past the springs and public buildings, cutting the town in two, on its way to fall into the Eger. Your eye takes in the life of the streets, the goings to and fro, but on a reduced scale—such tiny men and women, and little carriages! 'Tis as if one were looking into Lilliput. Opposite rises the precipitous rocky hill, the Hirschsprung, to the craggy summit of which we shall climb by-and-by; and beyond it, ridgy summits, away to the gloomy expanse of the Schlaggenwald. Many are the paths that penetrate the rearward valleys, and white roads curving along the hill-sides high above Carlsbad, and far up the distant slopes. Altogether the view is striking, and somewhat romantic; yet in the eyes of the Germans fresh from their flat, uninteresting country, it is "wunderschön"—an epithet which they never tire of heaping on the landscape.

From the garden a path leads along the ridge to a higher elevation, where the three tall crosses, seen for miles around, spring from a rocky knoll at the rear of a small semicircular opening, enclosed by firs, prettily intermingled with beech and birch. Heath and yellow broom grow from crevices in the rocks, and the wild thyme, crushed by your foot, fills the air with aromatic sweetness, for the spot is left to the nurture of the winds and the rain. It commands the same view as from the garden; but with a wider scope, and the town lying at a greater depth.

The path still curving along the ridge brings you presently to König Otto's Höhe—King Otto's Height—the highest point of the hill. This is also an untrimmed spot, with two or three seats, and a fluted granite column, surmounted by a globe and star, rising in the midst. You now look over some of the nearer hills, and get fresh peeps into the valleys, discovering topographical secrets. Raised high into the region of cooling breezes, yet easily accessible, it is a pleasant place for quiet recreation.

I took the shortest way down from Otto's Height, crossing the rough declivity and the fields that stretch far up the lower slope of the hill, and made a circuit to Findlater's monument at the upper extremity of Carlsbad. From the eminence on which it is erected you get a new prospect of the town, and up the valley of umbrageous retreats much resorted to by visitors on sultry afternoons.

On my way back to the Morgenstern I had another look at the Sprudel. The place was now deserted; the Naiads had departed; the stall-keeper had locked her glazed doors and withdrawn; and there was nothing near to subdue the vivid rushing sound of the water. So to remain till evening, when a few anxious patients would appear to quaff new draughts of health.

The inn was in all the bustle of dinner, after the manner of a table d'hôte, but without its formality—twenty little tables instead of a single large one. By this arrangement the guests formed small parties, and ate and chatted at pleasure. Many came in who were not lodgers in the house—among them a countess, from Moravia, to whom no more attention was paid, nor did she appear to expect it, than to the others. The absence of stiffness was, indeed, an agreeable characteristic of the company, who were mostly Germans.

"Are you here for the cure?" said an old gentleman who sat opposite me, and looked at my tankard of beer and salad with an air of surprise. "Are you not afraid?"

My answer reassured him. Visitors who come to drink the waters are required by medical authority to conform to a simple regimen. To eat no salad, fruit, or vegetables—to drink no beer or wine—to eat no bread. The exceptional cases are rare; hence the provision consists but of sundry preparations of meat, decanters of water, pudding resembling boiled pound-cake, and baskets of small rolls. The latter, made of wheaten flour, are not recognised as bread, but come under the common term, Semmel—the simmel of which we read in descriptions of lordly banquets in our Plantagenet days. The term bread is confined to the large brown and black loaves made of rye meal, the staple of household diet in Bohemia; and to Carlsbad patients this is forbidden. So Nature always goes on vindicating her simple laws, convincing mankind, in spite of themselves, of the wholesome effects of fresh air, daily exercise, plain food, and spring water; and mankind, returned to crowded cities and artificial pleasures, go on forgetting a lesson which is as old as the hills.

In the afternoon I mounted to the top of the Hirschsprung, and passed two or three hours on the jutting crags which overlook the town and a wide expanse of rolling fields and meadows towards Saxony. Stairs and fenced platforms on the outermost points enable you to survey in full security. The conformation of the crags is not unlike that which prevails in the Saxon Switzerland. Here and there tablets in the rock record the visits of royal personages, and on the topmost, surmounted by a cross, is an inscription in Russian, and the name of Czar Peter, who included among his exploits that of riding up the Hirschsprung on horseback in 1711.

You cannot be long in Carlsbad without hearing a flourish of trumpets from the top of the Watch-tower, announcing the arrival of visitors. No sooner do the trumpeters spy a carriage approaching from their lofty station, than they begin to sound, and, in proportion to the appearance of the vehicle, so do they measure out their blast—most wind for the proudest. While I was looking down, a sudden note, unusually prolonged, woke up the drowsy echoes, for rattling down the zigzagged highway from Prague came his unenviable majesty, Otho of Greece, to undergo a course of the Sprudel—at least, so said the newspapers. Not till he had alighted at the hotel did the trumpeters cease their salute, for kings can pay well; but let a dusty-footed wayfarer, with knapsack on shoulder, come into the town, and not a breath will they spare to give him welcome.

At six in the evening—having surveyed Carlsbad from within and without, and from the highest points on either side—I started to walk to Buchau, a village about ten miles off—an easy distance before nightfall. The Morgenstern charged me two florins for my bed, and less than two florins for all my diet—supper, breakfast, and dinner; which, in one of the dearest watering-places in Europe, was letting me off on reasonable terms.

CHAPTER VII

Departure from Carlsbad—Dreifaltigkeits-Kirche—Engelhaus—The Castle—A Melancholy Village—Up to the Ruins—An Imperial Visit—Bohemian Scenery—On to Buchau—The Inn—A Crowd of Guests—Roast Goose—Inspiriting Music—Prompt Waiters—The Mysterious Passport—The Military Adviser—How he Solved the Mystery—A Baron in Spite of Himself—The Baron's Footbath—Lighting the Baron to Bed.

Some years ago Carlsbad was scarcely accessible by vehicles coming from the interior, so abrupt was the declivity of its western hill. Now the difficulty is overcome by the zigzags of an excellent road, such as Austrian engineers know well how to construct. The shortest way out of the town for one on foot is up a street painfully steep, which brings you at once to an elevation, whence there is a view of the hills and hollows at the head of the valley. The zigzags are long, and there are no cut-offs, whereby you lose sight but slowly of the Valley of Springs.

Once past the brow and a view opens over a hilly landscape in the opposite direction, repeating the characteristics of Bohemian scenery—large unfenced fields, with clumps of firs and patches of forest on the highest swells, and the road, in long undulations, running between rows of birch and mountain-ash. There is a monotony about it, varied only by the difference of crops, the rise and fall of the ground, or rags of mist which, after a shower, hang about the dark sides of distant hills. By-and-by the ruined castle of Engelhaus, crowning a conical hill, peers up on the left, higher and higher as you advance, till at length it stands out a huge mass, looking grimly down on a village beneath.

But now a low building on the right attracts your attention. It is a small, low, triangular church—Dreifaltigkeits-Kirche—in a narrow graveyard, where the few mounds and the low wooden crosses that mark them are scarcely to be seen for tall grass and weeds. The interior, so far as I could see through a chink in the rusty, unpainted door, contains nothing remarkable except a rude altar, and a small gallery in each angle. A chapel and arcades are built against two sides of the enclosing wall, and four life-size figures of apostolic aspect sit, recline, and kneel in front of a half-length figure, bearing a crucifix, placed in a recess. They seemed fit guardians of a place which wears an appearance of neglect.

A little farther and there is a byeway, leading across the fields to Engelhaus, about a quarter-mile distant, and a very Irish-looking village it is; squalid and filthy, built in what, to a stranger, appears a total disregard of the fitness of things. Here and there the noise of a loom—a noise which denotes a poverty-stricken existence—sounded from some of the cottages, and the aspect of the villagers is quite in keeping with their environment. And yet a wandering musician, who carried a trestle to rest his organ on, was trying to coax a few Kreutzers out of their pockets by airs most unmelodious; as if the worst kind of music were good enough for folk so deficient in a sense of propriety. The inside of the houses is no better than the outside. Seeing a pale, damp-browed weaver at a window, I stopped to put a question. He opened the casement, and out rushed a stream of air so hot, stifling, and malodorous as fully accounted for his abject looks, and made me content with the briefest answer.

A steep path, completed in one place by a wooden stair, leads you up and along the precipitous side of the hill to the principal entrance of the castle, an old weatherbeaten arch bestriding the whole of the narrow way. Here a few tall trees form the commencement of an avenue, which the young trees planted farther on will one day complete, and increase the charm of the ancient remains. The path skirting the bold crags passes an old tower, and enters a court which, since the visit of the Emperor and Empress in 1854, is called the Kaiserplatz. Three young trees, supported by stakes painted black and yellow, and blue and white, are growing up into memorials of the incident, and dwarf-firs, set in the turfy slope, form the initials F i E—Francis Joseph, Elizabeth. A small pool in one corner reflects the dilapidated walls; the mountain-ash, trailing grasses, and harebells grow from the crevices, trembling in the breeze; and the place, cool, green, and sequestered, is one where you would like to sit musing on a summer afternoon.

The steep and uneven ground adds much to the picturesque effect of the ruin. You make your way from court to court by sudden abrupt ascents and descents, protected in places by a fence—now under a broken arch, now creeping into a vault, now traversing a roofless hall, climbing the fragment of a stair, or pacing round the base of the mighty keep. Loose stones lie about, bits of walls peer through the soil, or, concealed beneath, form grassy hummocks, showing how great have been the ravages of time and other foes. Here and there stands a portion of wall on the very brink of the precipice, and a railing stretched from one to the other enables you to contemplate the prospect in safety. The appearance of the country is such that the hill appears to be in the centre of a great, slightly-hollowed basin, which has a dark and distant rim. The basin is everywhere heaving with undulations, patched and striped with firs and the lines of trees along the highways, while a few ponds gleam in some of the deepest hollows. A few widely scattered cottages, or the white walls of a farmstead, dot the green surface of the fields; and such is the general character of the scenery all the way from the Erzgebirge to Prague—indeed, all the central region of Bohemia. One league, with small differences, is but a repetition of the other.

I prowled so long about the ruins, enjoying the lusty breeze that shook the branches merrily and roared through the crevices, that long shadows crept over the landscape, raising the highest points into bold relief, and veiling the remoter scenes before I descended. The sun, fallen below the Saxon mountains, lit up an immense crescent of angry clouds with a lurid glare, from which the twilight caught a touch of awfulness. The ponds shone with unearthly lustre for a few moments, and then lay cold and gray, and there seemed something spectral in the thin lines of firs as they rose against the glare.

I returned to the road, and found the last two or three miles solitary enough, for not a soul did I meet, and the way lay through a forest where the only light was a faint streak overhead. It was near ten o'clock when I came to Buchau—a village of low houses built round a great square—in which stood some twenty or thirty laden wagons. The appearance of things at The Sun was not encouraging: a dozen wagoners in blue gaberdines lay stretched on straw in the sitting-room, leaving but a small corner of the floor vacant, where sat the host, who made many apologies for having to turn me away. I walked across the square, and tried Der Herrnhaus, and on opening the door met with a rare surprise. The large room was crowded with some threescore guests, including a few soldiers, seated at narrow tables along the sides and across the middle, every man with his tankard of beer before him. In one corner a party of gipsies played wild and lively music, making the room echo again with the sounds of flageolet, violin, and bass, and electrifying the company with their wizard harmonies. Some, unable to contain themselves, chanted a few bars of the inspiriting measure; others beat time with hands or feet, and joined in a whoop at the emphatic passages; and all the while a gruff outpouring of talk struggled with the bass for the mastery. There was a clatter of knives and forks, a rattling of pewter-lids by impatient tipplers, and hasty cries for pieces of bread. And over all hung a cloud of smoke, rolling broader and deeper as the puffs and swirls went up from fifty pipes.