pines and free-stone, rafts of long slim pines, and big stone barges, are what one sees upon the River there. A Note, not very geological, says of it:--"Elbe sweeps freely through this Country, for ages and aeons past;curling himself a little into snake-figure, and with increased velocity, but silent mostly, and trim to the edge, a fine flint-colored river;--though in aeons long anterior, it must have been a very different matter for torrents and water-power. The Country is one huge Block of Sandstone, so many square miles of that material;ribbed, channelled, torn and quarried, in this manner, by the ever-busy elements, for a million of Ages past! Chiefly by the Elbe himself, since he got to be a River, and became cosmic and personal; ceasing to be a mere watery chaos of Lakes and Deluges hereabouts. For the Sandstone was of various degrees of hardness;tenacious as marble some parts of it, soft almost as sand other parts. And the primordial diluviums and world-old torrents, great and small, rushing down from the Bohemian Highlands, from the Saxon Metal Mountains, with such storming, gurgling and swashing, have swept away the soft parts, and left the hard standing in this chaotic manner, and bequeathed it all to the Elbe, and the common frosts and rains of these human ages.
"Elbe has now a trim course; but Elbe too is busy quarrying and mining, where not artificially held in;--and you notice at every outlet of a Brook from the interior, north side and south side, how busy the Brook has been. Boring, grinding, undermining; much helped by the frosts, by the rains. AEons ago, the Brook was a lake, in the interior; but was every moment laboring to get out; till it has cut for itself that mountain gullet, or sheer-down chasm, and brought out with it an Alluvium or Delta,--on which, since Adam's time, human creatures have built a Hamlet. That is the origin, or unwritten history, of most hamlets and cultivated spots you fall in with here: they are the waste shavings of the Brook, working millions of years, for its own object of getting into the Elbe in level circumstances. Ploughed fields, not without fertility, are in the interior, if you ascend that Brook; the Hamlet, at the delta or mouth of it, is as if built upon its TONGUE and into its GULLET:
think how picturesque, in the November rains, for example!
"The road" one road, "from Dresden to Aussig, to Lobositz, Budin, Prag, runs up the river-brink (south brink); or, in our day, as Prag-Dresden Railway, thunders through those solitudes; strangely awakening their echoes; and inviting even the bewildered Tourist to reflect, if he could. The bewildered Tourist sees rock-walls heaven-high on both hands of him; River and he rushing on between, by law of gravitation, law of ennui (which are laws of Nature both), with a narrow strip of sky in full gallop overhead; and has little encouragement to reflect, except upon his own sorrows, and delirious circumstances, physical and moral. 'How much happier, were I lying in my bed!' thinks the bewildered Tourist;--does strive withal to admire the Picturesque, but with little success;notices the 'BASTEI (Bastion),' and other rigorously prescribed points of the Sublime and Beautiful, which are to be 'done.'
That you will have to DO, my friend: step out, you will have to go on that Pinnacle, with indifferent Hotel attached; on that iron balcony, aloft among the clouds yonder; and shudder to project over Elbe-flood from such altitudes, admiring the Picturesque in prescribed manner.
"This Country has for its permanent uses, timber, free-stone, modicum of milk and haver, serviceable to the generality;--and to his Polish Majesty, at present, it is as the very Ark of Noah:
priceless at this juncture; being the strongest military country in the world. Excellent strength in it; express Fortresses; especially one Fortress called the Konigstein, not far from Schandau, of a towering precipitous nature, with 'a well 900 feet deep' in it, and pleasant Village outside at the base;--Fortress which is still, in our day, reckoned a safe place for the Saxon Archives and preciosities. Impregnable to gunpowder artillery; not to be had except by hunger. And then, farther down the River, close by Pirna, presiding over Pirna, as that Konigstein in some sort does over Schandau, is the Sonnenstein: Sonnenstein too was a Fortress in those days of Friedrich, but not impregnable, if judged worth taking. The Austrians took it, a year or two hence; Friedrich retook it, dismantled it: 'the Sonnenstein is now a Madhouse,' say the Guide-books.
"Sonnenstein stands close east or up-stream of Pirna, which is a town of 5,000 souls, by much the largest in those parts;Konigstein a little down-stream of Schandau, which latter is on the opposite or north side of the River. These are the two chief Towns, which do all the trade of this region; picturesque places both:--the Tourist remembers Pirna? Standing on its sleek table or stair-step, by the River's edge; well above floodmark; green, shaggy or fringy mountains looking down on it to rearward; in front, beyond the River, nothing visible but mile-long cream-colored rock-wall, with bushes at bottom and top, wall quarried by Elbe, as you can see. Pirna is near the beginning [properly END, but we start from Dresden] or western extremity of Saxon Schweitz. Schandau, almost at the opposite or eastern extremity, is still more picturesque;standing on the delta of a little Brook, with high rock-cliffs, with garden-shrubberies, sanded walks, tufts of forest-umbrage;a bright-painted, almost OPERATIC-looking place,--with spa-waters, if I recollect: "yes truly, and the "Bath Season" making its packages in great haste, breaking up prematurely, this Year (1756)!--Directly on arriving at Gross-Sedlitz, Friedrich takes ocular survey of this Country, which is already not unknown to him.