This is the chief town of the county of Tirol, _Œnopontum_ in Latin, the residence of Fernand, Archduke of Austria.[87] It is a very beautiful little town and well built, standing in the bottom of the valley and full of fountains and running water, a convenience most common in all the towns we have seen in Germany and Switzerland. The houses are almost all built terraced, and we found lodgment at the “Rose,” an excellent house where they served us on plates of pewter. As to napkins of French fashion, we had already had them given us several days previous. Round about some of the beds they had hung curtains which, as typical of the character of the people, were fine and rich, of a certain sort of cloth, slashed and open worked, and also very short and narrow. In fine they were quite unfitted for the use to which we put such things, and there was besides a little tester, three fingers wide, with a lot of tassels. They gave me for M. de Montaigne white sheets trimmed with lace, four fingers wide, as is the custom of most towns in Germany. All night long men go about the streets crying the hour. Everywhere we have been they have the fashion of serving the fish the same time as the meat; but, as far as we saw, they offer no meat on fish days. On the Monday we departed, travelling along the right bank of the Inn through a fair plain for two leagues until we reached Hala. We made the journey solely to see this place. Like Insprug it is a small town, about the size of Libourne, on the river Inn, which we crossed by a bridge. Here is produced all the salt used in Germany; they make nine hundred loaves thereof weekly at one crown apiece, the loaves being about the thickness of a half-hogshead, and somewhat of the same shape, for the vessel which serves as a mould is of the aforesaid kind. This traffic belongs to the archduke, and is carried on at a vast cost. To produce the salt they had gathered together the greatest store of wood I ever saw, for they boil in vast stoves of iron the brine, which is brought from a mountain more than two good leagues distant. There are several fine churches, notably one belonging to the Jesuits, and this, as well as the one in Insprug, M. de Montaigne visited. Other churches there are, richly adorned and finely situated. After dinner we recrossed the river, forasmuch as the fine palace where the Archduke Fernand of Austria dwells is there situated. M. de Montaigne desired to kiss the hand of this prince, as he passed thereby in the morning, but from what a certain count told him he learned that the archduke was holding a council.