The inhabitants of the valleys look after such pedestrians with a smile,--they cannot imagine what these fellows, with their long mountain-staffs and ice-picks, their knapsacks on their backs, and their hob-nailed shoes, according so ill with their city costume, can want among the mountains. That these people from the city should undertake such difficult and wearisome expeditions for pleasure, that they should at peril of their lives ascend the most inaccessible mountain-peaks to find a passage to a place which they could otherwise reach much more quickly and easily, seems to these honest countryfolk so silly that they have but one explanation for it, doubtless a harmless insanity; and they call these restless, indefatigable climbers of glaciers and snow-peaks, Bergfaxes (mountain fools). They are very fond of the Bergfaxes nevertheless, for they always need guides and carriers for their mountain expeditions, and are willing enough to pay their guilders for service rendered, thus bringing some cash at least into the retired valleys. With the exception of the Bergfaxes, who sometimes take up their abode in Tausens for a few days to make the ascent of the Drei Maidelspitz or the Weisshorn from the Schwarzbachthal, or of the Spitzhorn from the Rothwalden, and who finally depart for the Zillerthal over the Schiechjoch, scarcely a traveller ever visits Tausens, although its magnificent situation makes it well worthy of a sojourn. The view from the platform in front of the inn, which is also the post-office, is magnificent, and enchantingly lovely. Towards the south the eye revels for leagues in the broad green fertile valley of the Tausenser Aar, lying between two fir-clad mountain-ranges, and closed in in the far distance by the jagged and rocky peaks of the Dolomites. To the northeast lie the beautiful forests of the Rothwald, with the snowy pile of the Spitzhorn for a background, and to the northwest the two glorious glaciers of the Maidelspitz and the Weisshorn. In this wondrously lovely country the ancient castle of Reifenstein is a most striking object, commanding as it does the entire panorama of mountain, river, and valley. The glorious old pile is still in tolerable repair,--a careful hand has stayed the ravages of time, which have buried in ruins so many of its contemporaries. Some of the old walls are crumbling, it is true, but the main structure is in thorough repair, and two huge round towers are propped from decay by a modern substructure. Although in the interior these towers are so ruinous that their summits are inaccessible, their massive masonry defies the tempests that rage against them from the south and northeast, and will still for coming centuries bear witness to the despotic sway once exercised over the three valleys by the lords of Reifenstein.