Sketches of Moravian life and character Author:James Henry Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: III. HERRNHUT. In that portion of eastern Saxony termed Upper Lusatia, or "Die Ober Lausitz," an old and beautiful country still greets the eye of the trav... more »eler. As he pursues the course of the "Chausse'e," or public highway, running south from Loebau to Zittau, or, as he is more likely to do, takes that modern invention and destroyer of the poetical past, the locomotive, which now steams through the districts of country that have been the scenes of all the noted warfare of the last and the present century, from Charles XII. to Napoleon I., he will find himself cast among the varied associations of old Europe. Looking toward the south, the semicircular range of the Bohemian Mountains appears in view, rising here and there into those peculiar peaks which characterize the geology of this portion of the earth in contrast with our own. These form the boundary between Bohemia and Saxony, under the jurisdiction of the latter of which Lusatia still remains. To such a quiet and extremely aged picture as the landscape here furnishes, these mountains afford a most appropriate inclosure, and heighten, in a marked degree, the whole beauty of Lusatia. Scattered all around throughout this region are still to be found the vestiges of feudalism, and, occasionally, a cloister or a chapel. The ruins of the castle, where they yet exist, are carefully preserved with that veneration for the obsolete that results from a European education. But what most strikes the American tourist, in these portions of central Europe, is the " Dorf" and its gray cottages. Many of these lowly structures may be centuries old, and are but in the earliest stage of their annals when our buildings reach their usual time of demolition. A dense thatch is seen to cover them, and the dark color and patches of moss t...« less