In those days, when steamboats were not, such a voyage was slow, and not seldom in a high degree tedious. With such a company the want of speed was a consideration of no importance, and the memory of this journey was in after years among Beethoven's brightest. Those who know the Rhine and the Main can easily conceive that this should be so. The route embraced the whole extent of the famous highlands of the former river, from the Drachenfels and Rolandseek to the heights of the Niederwald above Rüdesheim, and that lovely section of the latter which divides the hills of the Odenwald from those of Spessart. The voyagers passed a thousand points of local and historic interest. The old castles--among them Stolzenfels and the Brothers--looked down upon them from their rocky heights, as long afterwards upon the American, Paul Flemming, when he journeyed, sick at heart, along the Rhine, toward ancient Heidelberg. Quaint old cities--Andernach, with "the Christ," Coblentz, home of Beethoven's mother, Boppard, Bacharach, Bingen--welcomed them; Mainz, the Electoral city, and Frankfurt, seat of the Empire. And still beyond, on the banks of the Main, Offenbach, Hanau, Aschaffenburg, and so onward to Wertheim, where they left the Main and ascended the small river Tauber to their place of destination. Among the places at which they landed and made merry upon the journey was the Niederwald. Here King Lux advanced Beethoven to a more honorable position in his court, and gave him a diploma, dated from the heights above Rüdesheim, attesting his appointment to the new dignity. To this important document was attached, by threads ravelled from a boat-sail, a huge seal of pitch, pressed into a small box-cover, which gave the instrument a right imposing look,--like the Golden Bull in the Römer-Saal at Frankfurt. This diploma from His Comic Majesty Beethoven carried with him to Vienna, where Wegeler saw it several years afterward carefully preserved.