the King of Saxony.  He happened to be there at the time, on an afternoon excursion from Dresden; as we had seen him before, in the latter place, we passed directly on, only pausing to admire the flower-beds in the palace court.  The King is a tall, benevolent looking man, and is apparently much liked by his people.  As far as I have yet seen, Saxony is a prosperous and happy country.  The people are noted all over Germany for their honest, social character, which is written on their cheerful, open countenances.  On our entrance into the Saxon Switzerland, at Pillnitz, we were delighted with the neatness and home-like appearance of every thing.  Every body greeted us; if we asked for information, they gave it cheerfully.  The villages were all pleasant and clean and the meadows fresh and blooming.  I felt half tempted to say, in the words of an old ballad, which I believe Longfellow has translated: 

    “The fairest kingdom on this earth,
    It is the Saxon land!”

Going along the left bank of the Elbe, we passed over meadows purple with the tri-colored violet, which we have at home in gardens, and every little bank was bright with cowslips.  At length the path led down into a cleft or ravine filled with trees, whose tops were on a level with the country around.  This is a peculiar feature of Saxon scenery.  The country contains many of these clefts, some of which are several hundred feet deep, having walls of perpendicular rock, in whose crevices the mountain pine roots itself and grows to a tolerable height without any apparent soil to keep it alive.  We descended by a foot-path into this ravine, called the Liebethaler Grund.  It is wider than many of the others, having room enough for a considerable stream and several mills.  The sides are of sandstone rock, quite perpendicular.  As we proceeded, it grew narrower and deeper, while the trees covering its sides and edges nearly shut out the sky.  An hour’s walk brought us to the end, where we ascended gradually to the upper level again.

After passing the night at the little village of Uttewalde, a short distance further, we set out early in the morning for the Bastei, a lofty precipice on the Elbe.  The way led us directly through the Uttewalder Grund, the most remarkable of all these chasms.  We went down by steps into its depths, which in the early morning were very cold.  Water dripped from the rocks, which but a few feet apart, rose far above us, and a little rill made its way along the bottom, into which the sun has never shone.  Heavy masses of rock, which had tumbled down from the sides lay in the way, and tall pine trees sprung from every cleft.  In one place the defile is only four feet wide, and a large mass of rock, fallen from above, has lodged near the bottom, making an arch across, under which the traveller has to creep.  After going under two or three arches of this kind, the defile widened and an arrow cut upon a rock directed us to a side path, which branched off from this into a mountain.