444

DOMESTIC MANNEES OF THE PKUSSIAKS.

climbing up the thoroughfare as though they were a stringof mountaineers scaling Mont Blanc.

At length you reach the Pfarr-Mrche, standing on top of ahigh green sloj^e, with its narrow, gabled, cottage-like steeple,and the neighbouring Kirche - hof (burial - ground) plantedwith black and gilt wooden crosses as thick as hop-poles.This Pfarr-kirche Stands, as it were., on one side of a steepravine, or groove in the mountain, at the back of tlie town,whilst the opposite slope eonsists of a green truncated pyramidof earth furrowed with vineyards, and with a ränge of build-ings and walls at top that strike you as belonging to somequaint old palace.

This, however, is the Obere-Stadt, or upper town ofBregenz; it is surrounded with high old walls that are setwith rondels and bastions at intervals, and pierced withwindows, as well as covered with a series of roofs that seemas if the ancient palace had beert converted into a successionof low lodging-houses.

Descending the one slope below the Pfarr-kirche, andmounting the other that leads to the upper town, you findon entering the small arches which are cut through thewalls that you are in the midst of a little colony, about aquarter the size of the upper town of Boulogne, the wholeStadt belog but three streets wide, and each of those streetsonly eight houses long. The streets, moreover, are a brightgreen with their crop of grass, and the houses rüde enoughin their architecture to carry the mind back to the verydarkest ages. Some have colonnades like crypts, and othersgrandly-painted exteriors, with the traces of imitation pillarsand ornamental copings to be detected on the walls.

In one corner near the tall crown-roofed tower Standsthe Spital, or almshouse; and here, while we' were searchingfor an exit from the curious little city, we were startled by

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