Spiers: Memoranda of an autumn tour in 1836

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CONT. AUG. 24. WEDNESDAY.

knobs of foliage thereon skirted the opposite bank, above some sloping patches of corn & pasture & variously colored herbage arranged in semicircles around the wooded heights. And hereabouts a ruined chapel stood. And above the steeply wooded heights a castle with four towers & by its side a convent & above all a mountain colored of so dark a green as to show the white fronted abbey in high contrast. And the whole horizon was bounded by hills: & down in the valley to our left a little village was snugly nestled & the white paths leading to it diversified the color of the whole beautiful spot.

And now for some miles left we the river. And over hills & through woods such as Ardennes itself does not equal we reached Al dietz the dirtiest place I ever walked in. Truly it had rained for some hours which I do not record except as an excuse for this the most muddy and filthy of pigsties. Again we crossed the Lahn by an old bridge at Dietz an old respectable town where no one could speak French & continued our route to Limburg where we procured a one horse chaise to take us to the Lion which Sir Francis Head has in his "bubbles" rendered so notorious. On approaching it we anxiously counted the broken bottles in the road but at last they became too numerous & to the seasonable relief of our anxiety appeared an immense pile just at the entrance of the town of the well known bottles. And now commenced the scene which the author of the Bubbles has delineated so naïvely & so well. Every one we met laden with bottles; every thing the eye rested upon resolving itself into the form of bottles. And soon appeared in sight the "crane with 3 arms" underneath a shed. And Nassau soldiers were walking about as

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