Ischl is a small clean town,--if it may be so denominated, for I should think it scarcely contains two thousand inhabitants,--delightfully situated in a valley watered by the river Traun, which flows through it, and is crossed by a wooden bridge. On every side are beautiful walks, some into the woods, some along the river, others again up into the mountains; and even these the invalid may enjoy, as he is sure at every short distance of finding a comfortable seat on which to repose. These benches generally bear the name of some prince or princess, whose favorite spot it marks, and they are always so placed as to command a fine view of the town, the valley and river, or the mountains. On the right bank of the town there is a sort of public garden, which is called the Prater, and is said to be a _very humble_ imitation of the celebrated park of the same name at Vienna. Here are various amusements for the people, the principal ones shooting at the target with the rifle and the cross-bow; behind these gardens rises a little wooded hill, on the top of which is a seat called the Umbrella-seat, from the awning over it, which is spread in the shape of an umbrella. From this spot one enjoys a most beautiful panoramic view of the surrounding scenery. To the west lies the delightful valley that leads to Salzburg, on each side of which, mountain rises over mountain, all richly covered with wood. On the east one sees Ischl, with its steaming saltworks, and beyond it the valley of the Traun, seemingly closed in by the wild and rocky Alps which form the shores of the Traun-See. On the northern side a mighty wall of rocks, many thousand feet high, rises out of dark pine forests, and beyond these appears, in hoary whiteness and surrounded by glaciers and eternal snows, the summit of the Dachstein or Schneeberg, the loftiest of the Styrian Alps, which we often beheld in the evening from our windows, glowing with the ruddy beams of the setting sun long after all light had departed from the nearer and less elevated mountains. A fine range of wooded hills, at whose feet runs the Ischl, a small mountain stream that falls into the Traun, forms the southern boundary of this scene. The chief street in Ischl runs parallel with the river, and at its end is situated the _Pfannhaus_ or boiling house, with its adjacent works. This is a large circular building, containing an enormous iron boiler or pan, between thirty and forty feet in diameter and a foot and a half in depth, in which the solution of salt, conveyed there in pipes from the mines, is evaporated.