[2] “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” chap. xii. [3] “Regensburg in seiner Vorzeit und Gegenwart: Beschreibung der Stadt und Umgebung;” von J. Fink, gives not only a fairly full story of the things to be seen in the town, but also of the neighbourhood up to Befreiungshalle and down to Walhalla. [4] The translation gives no more than a rough rendering to the meaning of the verses. CHAPTER III RATISBON TO PASSAU “On one side far the fruitful plain extends; The other’s wooded steeps, Around the base of which in sinuous bends The Danube grandly sweeps.” _From the German_ From the Walhalla we have a glimpse of the kind of country through which for many miles the Danube winds its tortuous length. On the left bank are generally the lower hills of the Bayerischer Wald, though for a part of the way these recede to some distance; on the right, “low sedgy and Dutch like,” is an almost unbroken plain extending far to the south. This plain is now well cultivated, and here and there is broken by groups of farm buildings, by small villages consisting frequently of but a few houses (many of them with wooden balconies like those of typical chalets) dominated by white churches, the warm red minaret-like steeples of which--“Little Kremlin-looking cupolas” one visitor has termed them--form a notable feature in the landscape. On this plain we have great stretches of various crops merging the one into the other without any hedges or other division. Cattle may be seen ploughing the fields, and perchance a man sauntering along a road driving a couple of pigs--a cord from the right hind leg of one to the left hind leg of the other, each thus checking the other’s wanderings. Along the ever-winding river on either bank are occasional villages, but there is no place of special interest for some distance along the stream, which here and there almost doubles upon itself, and here and there receives the water of some small tributary. At Wörth, on the left bank--to which point the Walhalla railway runs--used to be a palace of the bishops of Ratisbon, later a residence of the Princes of Thurn and Taxis. Beyond Wörth the country on the left also becomes flat.