The valley of Wildbad, between Nuenburg and the town of Wildbad, is about 1400 feet above the level of the sea—and the mountains on each side about 1500 above the river. It resembles a good deal the _Vallée d’Enfer_, well known to most travellers. There is but a narrow border of cultivated ground on each side of the Enz—in some places not exceeding two or three hundred yards—in others, creeping up the steep acclivities nearly a quarter of a mile. Hay, corn, and potatoes are the chief productions of the valley. The pine occupies every slope not cultivated; the forest, on each side, presenting a serrated border, the salient angles sometimes coming nearly down to the banks of the stream—the interspaces being occupied with potatoes or some culinary vegetable. But the Enz itself presents more bustle and activity than its banks. Small and precipitous as is the torrent, it is made to carry the mountains—or at least their forests, on its slender back. The flotteurs or rafters are a race and craft distinct from the wood-cutters, who hew the trees in the mountains, and hurl them down their steep sides to the river. The Enz falls 370 feet in the short distance of nine miles between Wildbad and Nuenburg, and yet they manage to float down numerous rafts, or rather raftlets, two or three hundred feet in length, along this trajet. The method is simple but ingenious. At convenient distances, dikes or dams are run diagonally across the stream, with a sluice or flood-gate in the centre. When the gate is shut, the back-water accumulates so as to float the raft from the next dam higher up. The rafts are narrow, but very long and jointed. When one, two, or more have arrived at the dam, the head of the raft is brought close to the sluice—the gate is opened—and away darts the raft, with a loud noise and fracas—dashing against the rocks—each joint, as it passes over the dam, rising up like the dorsal fin of a huge whale rolling about in the sea. In this way they are conveyed from the mountains to the Rhine—the raftlets augmenting in breadth, or number of trees, in proportion as the stream augments and enlarges into a river. As every mountain must have a valley, so every valley must have a rivulet. However small the stream, it can be dammed so as to float one tree at a time—and when contributary streamlets from the mountains enlarge the parent stream, the raftlets increase in size also. Thus the main wealth of Wildbad is constantly floating down the Enz, consigned to distant countries, but leaving profit for the merchant, and affording employment for thousands and thousands of the industrious poor. The raftlets grown into rafts, having arrived at the Rhine, change hands, and the local boucherons, or floaters, return to their native valleys to renew their labours from spring till the approach of winter. The aggregated rafts now become FLOTILLAS, capable of bearing an army on their backs, and actually inhabited by four or five hundred—not seamen but raftmen, while they