THE " GIBRALTAR OF THE RH1NE.

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its massive strength to make it one of the most striking objectson the Rhine.

Facing the mouth of the Moselle there rises, close uponthe Ilhine-bank, a long mountain, whose sides are nearly per-pendicular with the water, and whose top is long and straightas an alligator's back. The end towards Cologne is a riehgolden green, with its thin covering of sun-burnt tnrf, except-ing where it is quarried in places, and there it is pinky withthe strata of red sandstone (gre's rouge) exposed to view; andas we look at it now, we can see it change colour as the smishoots in and out from the clouds (for it is a grey autumn-day,and the sky is dapplcd all over with flock-like patches ofvapour); so that the hill-side is "shot" at each play of thevarying liglit with many a shade, and seems to melt into a newtint of green with every shift of the clouds—as fitfully as thedolphin starts into a fresh hue when quivering with the agoniesof death. At the Ehrenbreitstein end, however, the bare grau-wacke rocks protrude, like mouldy bones, through the side,so that the mountain there is a fungus-brown, and rough andgnarled with enormous lumps of " earthy basalt;" while thewhole surface of the tall and jagged rock-wall is beautifullyhacked, as it were, with the breaking down of the crags,and finely scored all over with the lines of the slantingschistose blocks, the slabs leaning on one side, as you have seena row of heavy folios sloping upon some library shelf. In someplaces the crags look soft with the velvetty bloom of the mossupon them; and in others they glitter with a golden tinge whenthe sun bursts forth, as if they were so many big lumps ofpyrites. Then, how strangely do the vertical lines of the for-tress walls consort with the slanting strata of the rocks beneaththem! how smooth and drab they look in contrast with thedark and jagged mass! There are black, rough peaks, too,shoring up the topmost walls, like Nature's own buttresses.