Having reposed about half an hour by the margin of a weedy pond, from which a loud if not an harmonious concert of bull-frogs unceasingly issued, we buckled on our knapsacks once more, and, by a desperate effort, reached Stein Jena about three o'clock in the afternoon. It seldom happens that a natural scene, of which you have been led to form high expectations, does not disappoint you; yet I am bound in justice to acknowledge that in the account which he gave of the view from this point, the interesting curate of Auffenberg used the language of moderation. Elevated to a height of perhaps two thousand feet, we beheld across the valley beneath us, hill above hill arise,--all of them pyramidal, shaggy with forests of pine, beech, and oak, and interlaced one with another, so as to form the wildest yet most graceful combinations. The scene, too, was in one striking respect different from any on which we had yet gazed; namely, that cultivation was almost entirely kept out of view, because our position was such as to throw the depths of the plain behind the screen of their overhanging mountains. It was, indeed, only when we looked to the right, where on a level with ourselves fields of rye were waving, that the fact of our not having wandered into some uncleared and uninhabited region was demonstrated.
Stein Jena itself is a large, straggling, but remarkably neat village, of which the street is on both sides shaded by rows of trees, and where the houses can in many instances boast of being planted within the range of well-kept and tasteful gardens. It was on the top of the common beyond the village, however, that we paused to obtain our view, and to make one of those rude sketches which in such situations the most unpractised hand is induced to attempt; after which we again pushed forward. Ten minutes' walk carried us over the ridge, and then what a spectacle burst upon us! A huge plain was at our feet, green with the most abundant crops of grass and corn, and here and there broken in upon by a tall conical hill, which rose like a thing of art, and stood alone in the level. Surrounding the plain on all sides, were ranges of mountains, those near at hand resembling in their general character the graceful hills upon which we had just turned our backs,--those in the distance more precipitous and rugged, and above all, white along their summits with snow. There needed, in short, but some sheet of water,--a lake or a river winding through the valley, to complete such a picture as Stanfield would love to copy, and the humbler but not less enthusiastic worshipper of nature, gaze upon for hours unwearied. For not only was there wood and pasturage, hill and dale, rock and forest, in abundance,--but the haunts of man, without which a cultivated scene is always incomplete, rose there in abundance. There lay Hayde,--a compact and apparently well-built town; about three miles to the right of it, and nestling back its own cliffs, was Burgstein; while farther off Gabel, Reichstadt, with a countless number of villages besides, told of the busy hands by which these fair fields were tilled and kept in order. Heartily thanking our poetical friend for the instructions which he had communicated to us, and charmed out of all sense of fatigue for the moment, we continued our march, till the shelter of a vast wood received us, at once shutting out the glories of the panorama beneath, and screening us from the sun's rays, which had for some time back beat with inconvenient violence upon us from above.