I visited the minster of Freiburg yesterday morning.  It is a grand, gloomy old pile, dating back from the eleventh century—­one of the few Gothic churches in Germany that have ever been completed.  The tower of beautiful fretwork rises to the height of three hundred and ninety-five feet, and the body of the church, including the choir, is of the same length.  The interior is solemn and majestic.  Windows stained in colors that burn let in a “dim religious light” which accords very well with the dark old pillars and antique shrines.  In two of the chapels there are some fine altar-pieces by Holbein and one of his scholars, and a very large crucifix of silver and ebony, kept with great care, which is said to have been carried with the Crusaders to the Holy Land....

We went this afternoon to the Jaegerhaus, on a mountain near, where we had a very fine view of the city and its great black minster, with the plain of the Briesgau, broken only by the Kaiserstuhl, a long mountain near the Rhine, whose golden stream glittered in the distance.  On climbing the Schlossberg, an eminence near the city, we met the grand duchess Stephanie, a natural daughter of Napoleon, as I have heard.  A chapel on the Schoenberg, the mountain opposite, was pointed out as the spot where Louis XV.—­if I mistake not—­usually stood while his army besieged Freiburg.  A German officer having sent a ball to this chapel which struck the wall just above the king’s head, the latter sent word that if they did not cease firing he would point his cannons at the minster.  The citizens thought it best to spare the monarch and save the cathedral.

After two days delightfully spent, we shouldered our knapsacks and left Freiburg.  The beautiful valley at the mouth of which the city lies runs like an avenue for seven miles directly into the mountains, and presents in its loveliness such a contrast to the horrid defile which follows that it almost deserves the name which has been given to a little inn at its head—­the “Kingdom of Heaven.”  The mountains of the Black Forest enclose it on each side like walls, covered to the summit with luxuriant woods, and in some places with those forests of gloomy pine which give this region its name.  After traversing its whole length, just before plunging into the mountain-depths the traveler rarely meets with a finer picture than that which, on looking back, he seems framed between the hills at the other end.  Freiburg looks around the foot of one of the heights, with the spire of her cathedral peeping above the top, while the French Vosges grow dim in the far perspective.

The road now enters a wild, narrow valley which grows smaller as we proceed.  From Himmelreich, a large rude inn by the side of the green meadows, we enter the Hoellenthal—­that is, from the “Kingdom of Heaven” to the “Valley of Hell.”  The latter place better deserves its appellation than the former.  The road winds between precipices of black rock, above which the thick foliage shuts out the brightness of day and gives a somber hue to the scene.  A torrent foams down the chasm, and in one place two mighty pillars interpose to prevent all passage.  The stream, however, has worn its way through, and the road is hewn in the rock by its side.  This cleft is the only entrance to a valley three or four miles long which lies in the very heart of the mountains.