The age-herald., 1899-09-10

surpasses all others, until it seems that our tour is a succession of most charming and delightful surprises. Particularly is it so with my companions who visit these for eign shores for the first time and who are all enthusiasm and interest.
 For an hour or two after We start from Cologne there is not very much of interest in the Rhine; not until Bonn Is reached. In thls quaint old town the old gray walls of stone struggle down to the river, and its villas peep out of splendid gardens. Its stately university clinical institutes rising from the background are said to have been founded by the Ubii. Here Beethoven was born. near the spot where Queen Victoria has dedicated his monument, and not far away in the village cemetery lie Schuman the composer, and Niebuhr, the historian. Here the true beauty of tine Rhine seen cry begins. As everywhere in Europe, there is something in the air, the mysterious and indestructable tie with hah-forgotten his tory with Caesar and his bridges of boats, with Charlemagne and fis paladins with the vivid imaginary mediaeval journeyinRs of the "Closter of the Heath" with the campaigns of Frederick the Great, and Gustavus Adolphus, with Knights Tenn par and Luther the reformer, and with all the great shadows of a might past from Bai'5arossa to Bismarck. This river is one of the great highways of history, and it is not spoiled by railways on either shore, or the manufactures, in one of which from the springs near by an English com pany sends out the Appollnars waters of the world. We lived all day in an ex- quisite air upon the deck, although 1t was misty and we had frequent showers. We passed in quick succession the "castlsd crag of Drachenfels," which is but one of numberless robber strongholds which once drowned on the luckless passer-by.
 Each has history, veracious or apoc- ryphal
 Where br;l the Rhine, joins his greater waters, Cob lentz lies with it's bridge of boats opening to let us through a fortress celebrated in :, the time of the Romans who built here a castell.' Just opposite is Ehrenbreitstein l the broad stone honor, the German Gibral- 1 ter, whose garrsons were firing their mid l day salute as we passed. Ehrenbreitstein | is mountain fortress and Is inaccessible | from three sides, and was only twice forced by hunger to capitulate. Further on at Nemvied on the river bank in the Germa- mia foundry of Herr Krupp, a modern war rior baron whose monster guns have done their part in revolutionizng warfare
 From this point the beauty and interest of the river grows in intensity. The hills all rich with blossom'd trees, and fields which promise corn and wine, and scatter ed cities crowning these whose far, white walls along them shine, do not need the poetic license of Byron to accentuate their beauty. In too rapid succession we passed the Andernach, of which our own Longfellow has written with such poetic beauty. and Rheinfels and Staleck and on each side of St. Goar, the other strong holds once named derisvey by their fierce occupants the Mouse and Cat. In the mid de of the river Is "Pfalz," quaint old pentagonal tower, an important toll house of Louis Bavaria. And the point where the grim old Prussian commander, Butcher
 here crossed the river with the troops which Wellington was so anxously to await at evening on the fateful field of Waterloo. Then came the enchanted rocks of the Loreley, rising in a threa tening man. ner and wrapped in legends of old; in the waters beneath the nymph of Heine's bal lad hired sailors and fishermen to their destruction. Then came Liebenstein and Sternberg, called the hostile brothers, with the enchanting old legend of the two | brothers, who loved the same maiden.