I went back to the little inn and sat down to rest and chat awhile with the talkative landlady.  Notwithstanding her horrible Prussian dialect, I was much amused with the budget of wonders, which she keeps for the information of travelers.  Among other things, she related to me the legend of the Rosstrappe, which I give in her own words:  “A great many hundred years ago, when there were plenty of giants through the world, there was a certain beautiful princess, who was very much loved by one of them.  Now, although the parents of this princess were afraid of the giant, and wanted her to marry him, she herself hated him, because she was in love with a brave knight.  But, you see, the brave knight could do nothing against the great giant, and so a day was appointed for the wedding of the princess.  When they were married, the giant had a great feast and he and all his servants got drunk.  So the princess mounted his black horse and rode away over the mountains, till she reached this valley.  She stood on that square rock which you see there opposite to us, and when she saw her knight on this side, where we are, she danced for joy, and the rock is called the Tanzplatz, to this very day.  But when the giant found she had gone, he followed her as fast as he might; then a holy bishop, who saw the princess, blessed the feet of her horse, and she jumped on it across to this side, where his fore feet made two marks in the rock, though there is only one left now.  You should not laugh at this, for if there were giants then, there must have been very big horses too, as one can see from the hoofmark, and the valley was narrower then than it is now.  My dear man, who is very old now, (you see him through the bushes, there, digging,) says it was so when he was a child, and that the old people living then, told him there were once four just such hoof-tracks, on the Tanzplatz, where the horse stood before he jumped over.  And we cannot doubt the words of the good old people, for there were many strange things then, we all know, which the dear Lord does not let happen now.  But I must tell you, lieber Herr, that the giant tried to jump after her and fell away down into the valley, where they say he lives yet in the shape of a big black dog, guarding the crown of the princess, which fell off as she was going over.  But this part of the story is perhaps not true, as nobody, that I ever heard of, has seen either the black dog or the crown!”

After listening to similar gossip for a while, I descended the mountain-side, a short distance to the Bulowshohe.  This is a rocky shaft that shoots, upward from the mountain, having from its top a glorious view through the door which the Bode makes in passing out of the Hartz.  I could see at a great distance the towers of Magdeburg, and further, the vast plain stretching away like a sea towards Berlin.  From Thale, the village below, where the air was warmer than in the Hartz and the fruit-trees already in blossom, it was