He, with a brother student, accompanied me in the afternoon, to Wilhelmshohe, the summer residence of the Prince, on the side of a range of mountains three miles west of the city.  The road leads in a direct line to the summit of the mountain, which is thirteen hundred feet in height, surmounted by a great structure, called the Giant’s Castle, on the summit of which is a pyramid ninety-six feet high, supporting a statue of Hercules, copied after the Farnese, and thirty-one feet in height.  By a gradual ascent through beautiful woods, we reached the princely residence, a magnificent mansion standing on a natural terrace of the mountain.  Near it is a little theatre built by Jerome Buonaparte, in which he himself used to play.  We looked into the green house in passing, where the floral splendor of every zone was combined.  There were lofty halls, with glass roofs, where the orange grew to a great tree, and one could sit in myrtle bowers, with the brilliant bloom of the tropics around him.  It was the only thing there I was guilty of coveting.

The greatest curiosity is the water-works, which are perhaps unequalled in the world.  The Giant’s Castle on the summit contains an immense tank in which water is kept for the purpose; but unfortunately, at the time I was there, the pipes, which had been frozen through the winter, were not in condition to play.  From the summit an inclined plane of masonry descends the mountain nine hundred feet, broken every one hundred and fifty feet by perpendicular descents.  These are the Cascades, down which the water first rushes from the tank.  After being again collected in a great basin at the bottom, it passes into an aqueduct, built like a Roman ruin, and goes over beautiful arches through the forest, where it falls in one sheet down a deep precipice.  When it has descended several other beautiful falls, made in exact imitation of nature, it is finally collected and forms the great fountain, which rises twelve inches in diameter from the middle of a lake to the height of one hundred and ninety feet!  We descended by lovely walks through the forest to the Lowenburg, built as the ruin of a knightly castle, and fitted out in every respect to correspond with descriptions of a fortress in the olden time, with moat, drawbridge, chapel and garden of pyramidal trees.  Farther below, are a few small houses, inhabited by the descendants of the Hessians who fell in America, supported here at the Prince’s expense!

CHAPTER XVII.

ADVENTURES AMONG THE HARTZ.

On taking leave of Carl at the gate over the Gottingen road, I felt tempted to bestow a malediction upon traveling, from its merciless breaking of all links, as soon as formed.  It was painful to think we should meet no more.  The tears started into his eyes, and feeling a mist gathering over mine, I gave his hand a parting pressure, turned my back upon Cassel and started up the long mountain, at a desperate rate.