After dinner the neighbor made her appearance, with a large empty basket and announced herself ready to start. My landlady rolled up in a paper a large slice of bread and thrust it into my pocket, charging me two groschen (6 cents) for my dinner. I was about to shoulder my knapsack, when my guide asked for it, saying she had brought her basket on purpose for it. I hesitated at first; the thought of walking unencumbered, with a woman carrying my baggage seemed unchivalric, to say the least. I made a rapid comparison between my weakness and fatigue and the distance still to be traversed, and decided by placing the knapsack in her basket and assisting her to lift it upon her head. Off we went, under a clear sky, for the first time since I entered the Hartz. Through fine open forests and along precipices overhanging the Bode—past the hunting-grounds of the Dukes of Brunswick and across dells fragrant with spring flowers—so we walked, for nearly two hours, till the cottage-inn of the Rosstrappe was visible through a vista of trees. Here I took the knapsack and dismissed my guide with a ten-groschen-piece, which I had been told was the usual fee. It was evidently much more than she expected. After I had seen the Rosstrappe, and hung over the fearful chasm where the Bode thunders and foams seven hundred feet below, not forgetting to note the marvelous giant hoof-mark in the rock, I went back to the inn. The landlady gave me the whole story of the Rosstrappe while she brought and uncorked a bottle of _birkensaft_ or birch sap, for which the Hartz is celebrated. This beverage, which is made in no other part of the world, consists of the sap of the birch tree, sweetened and suffered to ferment slightly. It is of a bright pink color and delicious taste. I had the table brought to the door, where I could see the savage defile below, while the landlady seated herself opposite with her knitting and gave her tongue full play. Such a tongue! the words came in an everlasting stream, and the faster she talked the harder she knit; so that one yarn kept pace with the other, and my visit increased the growth of her stocking considerably.