This
grotesque, interesting country--unique, I believe, on the continent of
Europe--lies in a small triangle between the Mosel, the Belgian frontier
and the Schiefer hills of the Lower Rhine; it goes by the names of the
High Eifel, with the High Acht, the Kellberg and the Nurburg; the upper
(Vorder) Eifel, with Gerolstein, a ruined castle, and Daun, a pretty
village; and the Snow-Eifel (Schnee Eifel), contracted by the speech of
the country into Schneifel.
The last is the most curious, the most dreary, the least visited. Walls
of sharp rocks rise up over eight hundred feet high round some of its
sunken lakes--one is called the Powder Lake--and the level above this
abyss stretches out in moors and desolate downs, peopled with herds of
lean sheep, and marked here and there by sepulchral, gibbet-looking
signposts, shaped like a rough T and set in a heap of loose stones. It
is a great contrast to turn aside from this landscape and look on the
smiling villages and pretty wooded scenery of the valley of the Mosel
proper; the long lines of handsome, healthy women washing their linen on
the banks; the old ferryboats crossing by the help of antique
chain-and-rope contrivances; the groves of old trees, with broken walls
and rude shrines, reminding one of Southern Italy and her olives and
ilexes; and the picturesque houses, in Kochem, in Daun, in Travbach, in
Bernkastel, which, however untiring one may be as a sightseer, hardly
warrant one as a writer to describe and re-describe their beauties.
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