In one place we saw a nicely dressed German gentleman without any spectacles.  Before I could come to anchor he had got underway.  It was a great pity.  I so wanted to make a sketch of him.  The captain comforted me for my loss, however, by saying that the man was without any doubt a fraud who had spectacles, but kept them in his pocket in order to make himself conspicuous.

Below Hassmersheim we passed Hornberg, Goetz von Berlichingen’s old castle.  It stands on a bold elevation two hundred feet above the surface of the river; it has high vine-clad walls enclosing trees, and a peaked tower about seventy-five feet high.  The steep hillside, from the castle clear down to the water’s edge, is terraced, and clothed thick with grape vines.  This is like farming a mansard roof.  All the steeps along that part of the river which furnish the proper exposure, are given up to the grape.  That region is a great producer of Rhine wines.  The Germans are exceedingly fond of Rhine wines; they are put up in tall, slender bottles, and are considered a pleasant beverage.  One tells them from vinegar by the label.

The Hornberg hill is to be tunneled, and the new railway will pass under the castle.

THE CAVE OF THE SPECTER

Two miles below Hornberg castle is a cave in a low cliff, which the captain of the raft said had once been occupied by a beautiful heiress of Hornberg—­the Lady Gertrude —­in the old times.  It was seven hundred years ago.  She had a number of rich and noble lovers and one poor and obscure one, Sir Wendel Lobenfeld.  With the native chuckleheadedness of the heroine of romance, she preferred the poor and obscure lover.  With the native sound judgment of the father of a heroine of romance, the von Berlichingen of that day shut his daughter up in his donjon keep, or his oubliette, or his culverin, or some such place, and resolved that she should stay there until she selected a husband from among her rich and noble lovers.  The latter visited her and persecuted her with their supplications, but without effect, for her heart was true to her poor despised Crusader, who was fighting in the Holy Land.  Finally, she resolved that she would endure the attentions of the rich lovers no longer; so one stormy night she escaped and went down the river and hid herself in the cave on the other side.  Her father ransacked the country for her, but found not a trace of her.  As the days went by, and still no tidings of her came, his conscience began to torture him, and he caused proclamation to be made that if she were yet living and would return, he would oppose her no longer, she might marry whom she would.  The months dragged on, all hope forsook the old man, he ceased from his customary pursuits and pleasures, he devoted himself to pious works, and longed for the deliverance of death.