Europe and elsewhere, by Mark Twain [pseud.] [with an appreciation by Brander Matthews and an introduction by Albert Bigelow Paine]

EUROPE AND ELSEWHERE

right, huge green mountain ramparts rise up, and
after that for hours you are absorbed in watching
the rich shadow effects which they furnish, and are
only dully aware that New England is gone and that
you are flying past quaint and unspeakable old towns
and towers. Next day you have the lake of Zurich,
and presently the Rhine is swinging by you. How
clean it is! How clear it is! How blue it is! How
green it is! How swift and rollicking and insolent
are its gait and style! How vivid and splendid its
colors-beautiful wreck and chaos of all the soap
bubbles in the universe! A person born on the
Rhine must worship it.
I saw the blue Rhine sweep along; I heard, or seemed to hear,
The German songs we used to sing in chorus sweet and clear.
Yes, that is where his heart would be, that is
where his last thoughts would be, the "soldier of
the legion" who "lay dying in Algiers."
And by and by you are in a German region, which
you discover to be quite different from the recent
Swiss lands behind you. You have a sea before you,
that is to say; the green land goes rolling away, in
ocean swells, to the horizon. And there is another
new feature. Here and there at wide intervals you
have islands, hills two hundred and three hundred
feet high, of a haystack form, that rise abruptly out
of the green plain, and are wooded solidly to the top.
On the top there is just room for a ruined
castle, and there it is, every time; above the summit
you see the crumbling arches and broken towers
projecting.
II4