The Argosy — page 396: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

In the Black Forest. 375 In the gathering night up flashed the diligence from Freiburg, the advancing lights glowing like the eyes of a fiery monster. <A few moments’ pause and away it went again, the bells on the horses—few of the horses about here have bells—yjingling mysteriously, almost musically, long after it had passed out of sight. As I listened to them, mine host discoursed sweet music of his own in praises of his house and its surroundings—praises, no doubt, well merited. ‘Through the summer, he said, he was generally full of people, who spent, many of them, weeks at Hollsteig enjoying the baths, excursions, and mountain alr. Then before finally turning in, I explored the large stables, where four splendid white horses were being groomed and harnessed by a post-boy, flitting about like a will-o’-the-wisp. The light from his lantern threw a weird gleam over his features, reminding one of Schalken’s pictures. The diligence for which he was preparing would on this occasion start at midnight. ‘The buildings were all wrapped in gloom and silence as profound as that which reigned upon the hills and in the depths of the dark forests. The glimmer from the stable window was the one solitary token of life and habitation in all the blackness. ‘The day had been hot and sultry, but up here in the mountains it was well-nigh cold and cheerless as winter. When night and gloom had fled away and given place to sunshine and blue skies, I said good-bye to Hollsteig, and was once more on the road. Its finest point was at the Cross Rock, where the river rushed over its shallow bed at the bottom of a deep wild ravine, whilst the mountains rose above, gloomy and frowning in spite of the sunshine and the warm, soft air. The landscape widened ; opposite hills sloped upwards in long, gradual stretches, some green and cultivated, others dark with pine woods; villages, looking calm and happy, basked in the sunlight. Presently the cool surface of the ‘Titisee, one of the Black Forest lakes, came into view. In a few moments we had pulled up at the inn, for the sake of a rest and a short row upon the water. It was a small lake, long and narrow, surrounded by hills; sombre firs interspersing broad patches of bright green. To the right a stony barren height stood out in strange contrast with its fertile surroundings. Houses were dotted about, and the blue peat smoke curled upwards in picturesque contrast with the dark background. Trees fringing the borders of the water threw upon it their shadows. It was certainly one of the prettiest lakes in the Black Forest. Not the gloom and sombre depth, the intense solitude and romantic reputation of the Mummelsee; not, like that lake, found after much toiling up a mountain side, reposing out of the world and above the world. But the Titisee is surrounded by charming country, and after a long succession of hills and plains, valleys and ravines, this calm little sheet of water is a grateful break in the monotony of a day’s journey. A boy paddled me about in a punt; for there was something peculiar COMMICOOOKS.C© An