cones to the villages below. At a distance the sight of their bright red
dresses among the sombre green of the pines is suggestive of the fairies
with which legend has peopled the Black Forest.

The summit is reached at last, and two boundary posts apprise the traveller
that on this wooded ridge he passes from Baden into Wurtemberg. The
descent for miles is agreeably smooth and gradual; the mountain air blows
cool and refreshing, with an odor of the pines; the scenery is Black
Forest scenery, and what more could be possibly desired than this happy
combination of circumstances. Reaching Freudenstadt about noon, the
mountain-climbing, the bracing air, and the pine fragrance cause me to
give the good people at the gasthaus an impressive lesson in the effect
of cycling on the human appetite. At every town and village I pass through
in Wurtemberg the whole juvenile population collects around me in an
incredibly short time. The natural impulse of the German small boy appears
to be to start running after me, shouting and laughing immoderately, and
when passing through some of the larger villages, it is no exaggeration
to say that I have had two hundred small Germans, noisy and demonstrative,
clattering along behind in their heavy wooden shoes.

Wurtemburg, by this route at least, is a decidedly hilly country, and
the roads are far inferior to those of both England and France. There
will be, perhaps, three kilometres of trundling up through wooded heights
leading out of a small valley, then, after several kilometres over
undulating, stony upland roads, a long and not always smooth descent
into another small valley, this programme, several times repeated,
constituting the journey of the clay. The small villages of the peasantry
are frequently on the uplands, but the larger towns are invariably in
the valleys, sheltered by wooded heights, perched among the crags of the
most inaccessible of which are frequently seen the ruins of an old castle.