On the other side of the forest formerly dwelt a branch of this same race; but their employment had given them other customs and manners. They felled and trimmed their pine trees, rafted the logs down the Nagold into the Neckar, and from the Upper-Neckar to the Rhine, and thence far down into Holland, and even at the sea coast these raftsmen of the Black Forest were known. They stopped on their way down the rivers at each city that lined the banks, and proudly awaited purchasers for their logs and boards, but kept their largest and longest logs to dispose of for a larger sum, to the Mynheers for shipbuilding purposes. These raftsmen were accustomed to a rough, wandering life. Their joy was experienced in floating down the streams on their rafts; their sorrow in the long walk back on the banks. Thus from the nature of their occupation they required a costume entirely different from that worn by the glass-makers on the other side of the Black Forest. They wore jackets of dark linen, over which green suspenders of a hand-breadth's width crossed over their broad breasts; black leather knee breeches, from the pockets of which projected brass foot-rules like badges of honor; but their joy and pride lay in their boots, the largest perhaps that ever came into vogue in any part of the world, as they could be drawn up two spans of the hand above the knee, so that the raftsmen could wade around in a yard of water without wetting their feet. Up to quite a recent period, the inhabitants of this forest believed in spirits of the wood. But it is somewhat singular that the spirits who, as the legend ran, dwelt in the Black Forest, took sides in these prevailing fashions. Thus, it was averred that the Little Glass-Man, a good little spirit, only three-and-a-half feet high, never appeared otherwise than in a peaked hat with a wide brim, as well as a jacket and knee breeches and red stockings; whereas, Dutch-Michel, who haunted the other part of the forest, was a giant-sized broad-shouldered fellow in the dress of a raftsman, and several people who had seen him, asserted that they would not care to pay for the hides that would be used to make him a pair of boots. "And so tall," said they, "that an ordinary man would not reach to his neck." With these spirits of the forest, a young man of this region is reported to have had a strange experience, which I will relate: