By the time we had reached the chaussee, or main road, the morning was considerably advanced, and each new hour brought with it a wonderful accession of heat. Not a cloud was in the sky, and for a while, we were entirely destitute of shade. For though here, as elsewhere in Germany, the waysides be planted with rows of trees, the trees were as yet too young to prove essentially useful to the wanderer, and, to add to our misery, we had a long and toilsome ascent before us, with a broad, smooth, macadamised causeway, by which to accomplish it. It is true, that as often as we paused to look round, the glories of that magnificent scene gave us back our courage. Nevertheless, nature in this situation, as she is wont to do in most others, would have her way. We became exceedingly weary, and were fain, on reaching a wood near the summit, to sit down and rest. Early as it was when our journey began, we soon found that we had no chance of getting the road to ourselves. Many wayfarers were already abroad, among whom were several women, loaded like jackasses, with enormous panniers filled with I know not what species of evidently heavy goods. The tasks, indeed, which custom has imposed upon the lower classes of women in Germany, create in a stranger extreme surprise, if not indignation. I have spoken of the effects of this ungallant arrangement as they display themselves in Saxony; and I am bound to add that, in Bohemia, the same system is pursued, and the very same results produced. Besides a large portion of the field-work, such as hoeing, weeding, digging, planting, &c., it has fallen to the Bohemian women's share to be the bearers of all burdens; whether fire-wood be needed from the forest, grass, butter, eggs, and other wares required in the market-place, or trusses of hay lie abroad in the fields which it is necessary to fetch home. The inevitable consequence is, that, generally speaking, a woman ceases to have even a trace of youth about her by the time she has passed thirty. At three or four-and-twenty, she becomes brown and wrinkled, a year or two later, she loses her teeth, and last of all comes the goitre, which, by utterly destroying the symmetry of her form, leaves her, at thirty, little better than a wreck. As to the really old folks, the grandams and maiden aunts of the community, these are, at all moments, in a condition to play with effect the characters of Macbeth's witches; and when, as not unfrequently happens, they judge it expedient to go about bareheaded, the resemblance which they bear to the respectable individuals just alluded to, is complete. Yet in youth, not a few of the girls are extremely pretty; which makes you the more regret that the customs of the country, by subjecting them to such severe hardships, should rob them of their bloom before their time.