Their dialect and legends support the supposition that here some few remains of the Goths continued to flourish; for the legends of the Amelungs, Dietrich of Bern, and the Rose-garden, still live in the names of the places and the traditions of the people. Upon one of the highest mountains on the left shore of the Athesis, a Goth named Iffa had before-times settled; his descendants continued the settlement. The mountain is named the "Iffinger" to this day. Upon the southern slope, half-way up, the simple settlement was fixed. The Gothic emigrants had found it already cultivated. The Rhætian alpine-house, which Druses had met with when he conquered the Rasenian mountain-people, had suffered no change in its characteristic and commodious form through the Roman conquerors, who built their villas in the valley, and their watch-towers on dominating rocks. All the Romanised inhabitants of the Eltsch valley had, after the East-Gothic invasion, remained in quiet possession of their property. For not here, but farther east, from the Save and over the Isonzo, had the Goths pressed forward into the peninsula; and only when Ravenna and Odoacer had fallen, did Theodoric spread his hosts in a peaceful and regular manner over North Italy and the Etschland. Thus Iffa and his people had peacefully shared the soil with the Roman settlers whom they found upon the mountain, which at that time still possessed its Rasenian name. A third of the arable land, the meadows and woods; a third part of the house, slaves, and animals, was, here as everywhere, claimed by the Gothic settler from the Roman farmer. In the course of years, however, the Roman _hospes_ had found this close and involuntary vicinity to the barbarians inconvenient. He therefore left the rest of his property on the mountains to the Goths, in exchange for thirty yoke of the splendid oxen which the Germans had brought with them from Pannonia--and which they so well understood how to breed--and went southwards, where the Romans dwelt in greater numbers. And so the "Iffinger" had become completely Germanic, for the present master had suddenly sold the few Roman slaves which he possessed, and had replaced them by men and maids of Germanic race: Gepidians taken in war. This master was again named "Iffa," like his ancestor. He lived alone, a silver-haired man. A brother, and his wife and daughter-in-law, had, many years ago, been buried under a landslip. A son, a younger brother, and a son of the latter, had obeyed the call of King Witichis to arms, and had never returned from the siege of Rome. So no one was left to the old man but his two grandchildren, the boy and girl of the son who had fallen. The sun had set gloriously behind the mountains which bordered the incomparable Etsch valley in the blue distance to the south and west. A warm golden lustre lay upon the tender porphyry colouring of the "Iffinger," making it glow like red wine.