Here the stone masses immediately assumed another form.  They projected out like shelves sometimes as much as twenty feet from the straight side, and hung over the way, looking as if they might break off every moment.  I felt glad when we had passed under them.  Then as we ascended higher, we saw pillars of rock separated entirely from the side and rising a hundred feet in height, with trees growing on their summits.  They stood there gray and limeworn, like the ruins of a Titan temple.

The path finally led us out into the forest and through the clustering pine trees, to the summit of the Bastei.  An inn has been erected in the woods and an iron balustrade placed around the rock.  Protected by this, we advanced to the end of the precipice and looked down to the swift Elbe, more than seven hundred feet below!  Opposite through the blue mists of morning, rose Konigstein, crowned with an impregnable fortress, and the crags of Lilienstein, with a fine forest around their base, frowned from the left bank.  On both sides were horrible precipices of gray rock, with rugged trees hanging from the crevices.  A hill rising up from one side of the Bastei, terminates suddenly a short distance from it, in on abrupt precipice.  In the intervening space stand three or four of those rock-columns, several hundred feet high, with their tops nearly on a level with the Bastei.  A wooden bridge has been made across from one to the other, over which the traveller passes, looking on the trees and rocks far below him, to the mountain, where a steep zigzag path takes him to the Elbe below.

We crossed the Elbe for the fourth time at the foot of the Bastei, and walked along its right bank towards Konigstein.  The injury caused by the inundation was everywhere apparent.  The receding flood had left a deposit of sand, in many places several feet deep on the rich meadows, so that the labor of years will be requisite to remove it and restore the land to an arable condition.  Even the farm-houses on the hillside, some distance from the river, had been reached, and the long grass hung in the highest branches of the fruit trees.  The people wore at work trying to repair their injuries, but it will fall heavily upon the poorer classes.

The mountain of Konigstein is twelve hundred feet high.  A precipice, varying from one to three hundred feet in height, runs entirely around the summit, which is flat, and a mile and a half in circumference.  This has been turned into a fortress, whose natural advantages make it entirely impregnable.  During the Thirty Years’ War and the late war with Napoleon, it was the only place in Saxony unoccupied by the enemy.  Hence is it used as a depository for the archives and royal treasures, in times of danger.  By giving up our passports at the door, we received permission to enter; the officer called a guide to take us around the battlements.  There is quite a little village on the summit, with gardens, fields, and a wood of considerable size.  The only