and mud-filled ruts, along which it is all but impossible to ride; but
after leaving the level bottom of the Isar River the road improves
sufficiently to enable me to take an occasional, admiring glance at the
Bavarian and Tyrolese Alps, towering cloudward on the southern horizon,
their shadowy outlines scarcely distinguishable in the hazy distance
from the fleecy clouds their peaks aspire to invade. While absentmindedly
taking a more lingering look than is consistent with safety when picking
one's way along the narrow edge of the roadway between the stone-strewn
centre and the ditch, I run into the latter, and am rewarded with my
first Cis-atlantic header, but fortunately both myself and the bicycle
come up uninjured. Unlike the Swabish peasantry, the natives east of
Munich appear as prosy and unpicturesque in dress as a Kansas homesteader.

Ere long there is noticeable a decided change in the character of the
villages, they being no longer clusters of gabled cottages, but usually
consist of some three or four huge, rambling bulldings, at one of which
I call for a drink and observe that brewing and baking are going on as
though they were expecting a whole regiment to be quartered on them.
Among other things I mentally note this morning is that the men actually
seem to be bearing the drudgery of the farm equally with the women; but
the favorable impression becomes greatly imperilled upon meeting a woman
harnessed to a small cart, heavily laboring along, while her husband -
kind man - is walking along-side, holding on to a rope, upon which he
considerately pulls to assist her along and lighten her task. Nearing
Hoag, and thence eastward, the road becomes greatly improved, and along
the Inn River Valley, from Muhldorf to Alt Oetting, where I remain for
the night, the late rain-storm has not reached, and the wheeling is
superior to any I have yet had in Germany. Muhldorf is a curious and
interesting old town. The sidewalks of Muhldorf are beneath long arcades
from one end of the principal street to the other; not modern structures