either, but massive archways that are doubtless centuries old, and that
support the front rooms of the buildings that tower a couple of stories
above them.

As toward dusk I ride into the market square of Alt Oetting, it is
noticeable that nearly all the stalls and shops remaining open display
nothing but rosaries, crucifixes, and other paraphernalia of the prevailing
religion. Through Eastern Bavaria the people seern pre-eminently devotional;
church-spires dot the landscape at every point of the compass. At my
hotel in Alt Oetting, crucifixes, holy water, and burning tapers are
situated on the different stairway landings. I am sitting in my room,
penning these lines to the music of several hundred voices chanting in
the old stone church near by, and can look out of the window and see a
number of peasant women taking turns in dragging themselves on their
knees round and round a small religious edifice in the centre of the
market square, carrying on their shoulders huge, heavy wooden crosses,
the ends of which are trailing on the ground.

All down the Inn River Valley, there is many a picturesque bit of
intermingled pine-copse and grassy slopes; but admiring scenery is
anything but a riskless undertaking along here, as I quickly discover.
On the Inn River I find a primitive ferry-boat operated by a, fac-simile
of the Ancient Mariner, who takes me and my wheel across for the
consideration of five pfennigs-a trifle over one cent -and when I refuse
the tiny change out of a ten-pfennig piece the old fellow touches his
cap as deferentially, and favors me with a look of gratitude as profound,
as though I were bestowing a pension upon him for life. My arrival at a
broad, well-travelled high-way at once convinces me that I have again
been unwittingly wandering among the comparatively untravelled by-ways
as the result of following the kindly meant advice of people whose