Our road the first two days after leaving Prague led across broad, elevated plains, across which a cold wind came direct from the summits of the Riesengebirge, far to our left.  Were it not for the pleasant view we had of the rich valley of the Upper Elbe, which afforded a delightful relief to the monotony of the hills around us, the journey would have been exceedingly tiresome.  The snow still glistened on the distant mountains; but when the sun shone out, the broad valley below, clad in the luxuriance of summer, and extending for at least fifty miles with its woods, meadows and white villages, looked like a real Paradise.  The long ridges over which we travelled extend for nearly a hundred and fifty miles—­from the Elbe almost to the Danube.  The soil is not fertile, the inhabitants are exceedingly poor, and from our own experience, the climate must be unhealthy.  In winter the country is exposed to the full sweep of the northern winds, and in summer the sun shines down on it with unbroken force.  There are few streams running through it, and the highest part, which divides the waters of the Baltic from those of the Black Sea is filled for a long distance with marshes and standing pools, whose exhalations must inevitably subject the inhabitants to disease.  This was perceptible in their sallow, sickly countenances; many of the women are afflicted with the goitre, or swelling of the throat; I noticed that towards evening they always carefully muffled up their faces.  According to their own statements, the people suffer much from the cold in winter, as the few forests the country affords are in possession of the noblemen to whom the land belongs, and they are not willing to let them be cut down.  The dominions of these petty despots are marked along the road with as much precision as the boundaries of an empire; we saw sometimes their stalely castles at a distance, forming quite a contrast to the poor scattering villages of the peasants.

At Kollin, the road, which had been running eastward in the direction of Olmutz, turned to the south, and we took leave of the Elbe, after tracing back his course from Magdeburg nearly to his home in the mountains of Silesia.  The country was barren and monotonous, but a bright sunshine made it look somewhat cheerful.  We passed, every few paces, some shrine or statue by the roadside.  This had struck me, immediately on crossing the border, in the Saxon Switzerland—­it seemed as if the boundary of Saxony was that of Protestantism.  But here in the heart of Bohemia, the extent to which this image worship is carried, exceeds anything I had imagined.  There is something pleasing as well as poetical in the idea of a shrine by the wayside, where the weary traveller can rest, and raise his heart in thankfulness to the Power that protects him; it was no doubt a pious spirit that placed them there; but the people appear to pay the reverence to the picture which they should give to its spiritual image, and