"The Country, as you descend by dusty intricate lanes from Kuttenberg, with your left hand to the Elbe, and at length with your back to it, would be rather pretty, were it well cultivated, the scraggy litter swept off, and replaced by verdure and reasonable umbrage here and there. The Field of Chotusitz, where you emerge on it, is a wide wavy plain; the steeple of Chotusitz, and, three or four miles farther, that of Czaslau (pronounce 'KOTusitz,' 'CHASlau'), are the conspicuous objects in it. The Lakes Friedrich speaks of, which covered his right, and should cover ours, are not now there,--'all, or mostly all, drained away, eighty years ago,' answered the Czechs; answered one wiser Czech, when pressed upon, and guessed upon; thereby solving the enigma which was distressful to us. Between those Lakes and the Brtlinka Brook may be some two miles; Chotusitz is on the crown of the space, if it have a crown. But there is no 'height' on it, worth calling a height except by the military man; no tree or bush; no fence among the scrubby ryes and pulses: no obstacle but that Brook, which, or the hollow of which, you see sauntering steadily northward or Elbe-ward, a good distance on your left, as you drive for Chotusitz and steeple. Schuschitz, a peaked brown edifice, is visible everywhere, well ahead and leftwards, well beyond said hollow; something of wood and 'deer-park' still noticeable or imaginable yonder. "Chotusitz itself is a poor littery place; standing white-washed, but much unswept: in two straggling rows, now wide enough apart (no Konigseck need now get burnt there): utterly silent under the hot sun; not a child looked out on us, and I think the very dogs lay wisely asleep. Church and steeple are at the farther or south end of the Village, and have an older date than 1742. High up on the steeple, mending the clock-hands or I know not what, hung in mid-air one Czech; the only living thing we saw. Population may be three or four hundred,--all busy with their teams or otherwise, we will hope. Czaslau, which you approach by something of avenues, of human roads (dust and litter still abounding), is a much grander place; say of 2,000 or more: shiny, white, but also somnolent; vast market-place, or central square, sloping against you: two shiny Hotels on it, with Austrian uniforms loitering about;--and otherwise great emptiness and silence. The shiny Hotels (shine due to paint mainly) offer little of humanly edible; and, in the interior, smells strike you as--as the OLDEST you have ever met before. A people not given to washing, to ventilating! Many gospels have been preached in those parts, aud abstruse Orthodoxies, sometimes with fire and sword, and no end of emphasis; but that of Soap-and-Water (which surely is as Catholic as any, and the plainest of all) has not yet got introduced there!" [Tourist's Note (13th September, 1858).]