114

COLOGNE.

a distance, it seems as if it were a piain covered with a largeencampment of Bedouin Arabs.

As you thread your way between tbe rows of baskets, everygirl from the town is without eitber bonnet or cap, and ber hairplaited into a littlc tiara at tbe crown of her head, while someof the servant-girls have a flat dagger, like a gut paper-knifepassed througb tbe back of the hair, and a half-cap of silver orgold lace reacbing nearly to the ears—such as our ladies knitin Berlin wool.

The shops of Cologne liave nothing particularly remarkableabout them, with the exception, perbaps, that every tenth oneyou pass is some establishment for the sale of the veritable Eaude Cologne, and that each one of the hundred Farinas has amedal from the Great Exhibition of London exposed in biswindow, and gives tbe world a polyglot assurance, in brassletters, over the doorway and on the shop-front, that he is the" Altestee Distillirer des achten Kölnischen Wassers"(the oldest distiller of the veritable Eau de Cologne), and that

"NO FEES OR GRATDITIES ARE G1VEN TO GUIDES OR ERRAND-BOYSAT THE EXPENSE OF TRAVELLERS." Thcn the Slluff-shopS, tOO,

liave fastened to the wall above tbeir doors life-sized busts ofcardinals, which, with tbeir huge vermilion hats and capes,look as though tbe pious but snuffy prelates were modelled insealing-wax. The windows of the saddlers, again, are filled withthe large leathern reticules that the Rhine travellers love tocarry strapped across tbeir Shoulders, and projecting from tbeirhips like a game-bag; and with little mouse-coloured "ladies'companions," with steel chains, made so as to dangle at the sideafter the same fashion. Further, there are the German toy-shops stocked with a multiplicity of " nick-nacks" and papier-mächd imngcs, and bright-coloured Bohemian glass bottles,that sparkle like lai-ge carved rubies; — and the pipc-shops,