knowledge of bicycling requirements is of the slimmest nature. The Inn
River a warm, rich vale; haymaking is already in full progress, and
delightful perfume is wafted on the fresh morning air from aclows where
scores of barefooted Maud Mullers are raking hay, and mowing it too,
swinging scythes side by side with the men. Some of the out-door crucifixes
and shrines (small, substantial buildings containing pictures, images,
and all sorts of religious -emblems) along this valley are really quite
elaborate affairs. All through Roman Catholic Germany these emblems of
religion are very elaborate, or the reverse, according to the locality,
the chosen spot in rich and fertile valleys generally being favored with
better and more artistic affairs, and more of them, than the comparatively
unproductive uplands. This is evidently because the inhabitants of the
latter regions are either less wealthy, and consequently cannot afford
it, or otherwise realize that they have really much less to be thankful
for than their comparatively fortunate neighbors in the more productive
valleys.

At the town of Simbach I cross the Inn River again on a substantial
wooden bridge, and on the opposite side pass under an old stone archway
bearing the Austrian coat-of-arms. Here I am conducted into the custom-house
by an officer wearing the sombre uniform of Franz Josef, and required,
for the first time in Europe, to produce my passport. After a critical
and unnecessarily long examination of this document I am graciously
permitted to depart. In an adjacent money-changer's office I exchange
what German money I have remaining for the paper currency of Austria,
and once more pursue my way toward the Orient, finding the roads rather
better than the average German ones, the Austrians, hereabouts at least,
having had the goodness to omit the loose flints so characteristic of
Bavaria. Once out of the valley of the Inn River, however, I find the
uplands intervening between it and the valley of the Danube aggravatingly