And all around here the Swedes did as tidy a bit of work as was ever done by invading armies, the seventeenth century being for the valley a century of ravage and desolation. In one of the books[18] Mr. Helmer gave me last night I read that the cantons were so reduced during the Thirty Years’ War that places like Bitschwiller could register but four adults and eleven children, Moosch eleven adults and twenty-three children, St.-Amarin thirteen adults and forty-four children, and so on, the chief of their diet being acorns and roots and mice and other classic nutriment of epochs of destruction. There were moments when the Imperials, the Swedes, the French, and the Lorrains disputed the territory, and various troops camped on the Hartmannswiller and descended to the valley—and the _Roi Très Catholique_ was the ally of the Swedes, and the Abbey and its territories were under the Holy German Empire. But whoever was momentarily in possession, it was always disastrous for the inhabitants of the valley—and of what the children suffered these fatal figures I have quoted evoke some dull perception. As we pass the pleasant villages of Fellering and Odern and Krüt, all shining in the radiance of a strong though intermittent sun, with here and there scarfs of rainbow-like mists draped about them, we foolishly mocked the weather wisdom of Mr. Helmer, who, on being asked as we started out, if the weather would hold, had regretfully said, “No.” At Krüt we start to ascend the Wildenstein. Gorgeous matutinal effects continued their prismatic play everywhere on soft and fathomless black hills, the yellow lights on the _mélèze_ almost outshining the sun. On one mountain-side they made a line as would some procession of pilgrims bearing torches, and one almost thought one saw cowled heads and heard the chanting of a “_Pilgerchor_.” The air we were breathing was strong yet tenuous, and I felt a great refreshment and exhilaration. In these wide days of bending the hills, of folding the valleys, there has been, as it were, some unpacking of my mind, some shaking out of my soul, things long hidden have come to light, and the patched lining of memory has been freshened. Almost every event has appeared, accompanied by its secret meanings, in its relationship to secondary, generally unapparent, significances. I have had, too, a quickened sensitiveness to the beauty of the natural world. And can a journey do more for one than this?