According to Pindar, the region about the source of the Danube was a land of perpetual sunshine and teeming with the choicest fruits. It was inhabited by a people who enjoyed undisturbed peace, were immune from disease and lived a thousand years, which they spent in the worship of Apollo. It was from this highly favored land, Pindar tells us, that Hercules brought the olive which, it was averred, grew in profusion about the sources of the Danube.[5] And, from its headwaters to its entrance into the Euxine, the Danube was as rich in myths and legends as were ever the rivers and mountains and groves of ancient Hellas. According to the great German epic, the Nibelungenlied, it was at Pforring, a short distance above Ratisbon, that the legendary heroine, Kriemhild, bride-elect of Etzel, took leave of her brothers when on her way from the Rhine to far-off Hungary, where she was to join her new husband, the famous Etzel--Attila--king of the Huns, and where she was to consummate her plans of wreaking vengeance upon the murderers of her first husband, Siegfried. It may here be remarked in passing that the illustrious Albertus Magnus, probably the greatest scholar of the Middle Ages, reputed to be a magician as well as an eminent theologian and philosopher, was bishop of Ratisbon. About a half hour after leaving Ratisbon, in a cosy little steamer, we find ourselves near the foot of a wooded hill on whose brow _The Walhalla rises, purely white,_ _Temple of fame for all Germania’s great._ Seen at a distance it appears to be almost a reproduction of the Parthenon, both in dimensions and style of architecture. It is due to the munificence of Ludwig I, of Bavaria, who erected it as a Temple of Fame for those who had in any way signally honored the Fatherland. Some even, whose names are unknown, are duly commemorated in this magnificent edifice. Among them are the architect of the Cologne Cathedral and the author of the great German epic, the Nibelungenlied. When this temple was solemnly dedicated in October, 1842, Ludwig I, in the course of a stirring address, said, “May the Walhalla contribute to extend and consolidate the feelings of German nationality. May all Germans of every race henceforth feel they have a common country of which they may be proud, and let each individual labor according to his faculties to promote its glory.” It is the use of the word “German” in its broad historic and ethnological sense that explains the existence, in this Teutonic Hall of Fame, of tablets in honor of Hengist and Horsa, Venerable Bede and Alfred the Great.