GERMANY.
IN THE BLACK FOREST.
IN THE BLACK FOREST.
Triberg, Germany, July 17, 1905.
This is a small town in the middle of the Black Forest. I had read a good deal of the Black Forest, but really had no idea what it was. The name sounded as if it might be a part of Arkansas or Louisiana, and I think I was looking for swamps and waste land covered with underbrush and impenetrable to travelers except on made roads. But as a matter of fact it is as delightful and beautiful a country as I have seen since I left Kansas. The land is mountainous, but it is fertile and the valleys and hillsides are dotted with thrifty-looking little farms. The name applies, all right, for the mountains are covered with dense forests of spruce trees with a dark-green foliage which looks really black. The farming land has evidently been cleared in the centuries that have passed since the roving Germans settled into peaceful peasants and quit their occupation of making Rome howl by raiding and pillaging the towns of the declining empire. The Black Forest covers a great part of southwest Germany, mostly in the state or grand duchy of Baden. Up to a short time ago it had a number of practically independent little kingdoms about the size of your hat, which were in a perpetual struggle for existence and recognition. Anthony Hope used the Black Forest as the scene for his Zenda stories, and to-day we came through the principalityof Fürstenberg, one of his favorite places, in which the prince of Fürstenberg still holds an honorary position but under the actual government of Emperor William. I also noticed that the prince was proprietor of a big brewery.
It is harvest-time in the Black Forest, and men and women are gathering the crops, small grain and hay, using the hand-sickle and the hand-rake but doing their work in a thorough manner. When they get through the raking I don’t suppose there is a waste straw left lying on the ground or a kernel of grain which is not carefully picked up. The farmer in Europe would get rich on what an American farmer drops on the way from the field to the barn. They have fine horses and cattle in the Black Forest, and look prosperous. When one horse is used in a wagon he is harnessed alongside the pole and not between shafts. I was told the reason was that it was to make it easy to add another horse if desired without changing the pole. That was nearly as strange as the one horse alongside the pole.
The time is past when the sight of ladies working in the field excites any interest, although I still have a little feeling when the woman is sixty or seventy years old. It is not so bad in Germany, and especially in the Black Forest, where the air is light and exhilarating; and then the men work too. In Italy the hauling was done by animals as follows: Horses, oxen, cows, dogs, women. Sometimes a woman and a dog were hitched together to small wagons, especially milk carts. InSwitzerland the dogs were still in harness, but the women were out of it. And in the Black Forest I believe the dogs are freed, as all the vehicles I have seen have been drawn by horses or oxen. Perhaps it will be different later. I write now only of the Black Forest. We drove for twelve miles down one of the valleys and through the little villages. A number of the old peasant costumes were worn by women and girls, although most of them were dressed in the same styles as in Paris or Hutchinson. A very striking head-dress for the feminine is one of the Black Forest styles, a bonnet with two large wings extending upward at an angle of about 40 degrees from the head, and with flowing bands several feet long down the back. Girls and unmarried women have bright-colored wings and bands, married women must wear black. By the way, the women of continental Europe wherever we have been have worn earrings,—France, Italy, and Switzerland. As American women generally discarded these disfiguring ornaments several years ago, the sight has been a strange one. Especially in Italy are the earrings large and imposing, rich and poor vieing with each other in size of the pendants and rings.
Aside from agriculture the main industry of the Black Forest is wood-carving and clock-making. There are some small factories, but as a rule the work is done at home; and it is very good. We visited one of these home shops, and the whole family showed us their handiwork. A beautifully carved wooden hall clock with a cuckoo and a music-box which played everyhalf-hour was only $4 American money. It must have taken the man a week to make it, and in our country the price would have been several times as large. There is a big tariff on this ware going into America, and it is all right. If it were not so, our American wood-workers would have to learn another trade or work for $4 or $5 a week. And if they got only $4 or $5 a week they would not eat much meat, buy much clothing, or pay for many newspapers. See?
The people of the Black Forest are a charming, friendly lot. I suppose they are as happy as anybody, although one of them was very proud of a brother who had gone to America and was making “much geld,” and whom he would follow if he could. All through Europe I meet people who have relatives in America, and that may account for the friendly treatment I have everywhere received. These American relatives have all gotten “rich” according to their European relatives, which shows that the immigrants to our country all succeed or keep a stiff upper lip when they write to the folks in the fatherland.
The architecture of the Black Forest houses is as striking as any I have seen. Nearly every farmhouse is very large, at least three stories high, and on one or more sides the roof “gambrels” off from the high ridge nearly to the ground. The effect is like a tent-covering, and the roof is often thatched or tiled in two or three colors,—on some the green grass is growing. Part of the house is the barn. The winter here is said to be severe, and the Forest peasant evidentlybelieves in having his family and his horses, cows and chickens where they can be comfortable and sociable. The houses are extra clean, and the furniture, dishes and utensils of the kitchen shine with the good polishing they must receive. The little farms are tilled to the limit, and are generally irrigated and always fertilized. Just to show how these people manage to get a living out of the ground and the care they use to get it all, I saw women and men on the roadside with baskets cleaning the road of manure and carrying it to their land.
We have had to learn a new money system in Germany. France, Italy, Switzerland and Belgium have what is called a “Latin league,” with interchangeable currency, the unit being the franc (France, Switzerland, and Belgium), and the lire (Italy). But Germany joins no Latin leagues. The unit of the German currency is the “mark,” equivalent to twenty-five cents American. This is divided into one hundred pfennigs. Prices are carried out to the pfennig, and one-pfennig coins (in value one-fourth of one cent) are seen more than our one-cent pieces at home. That illustrates the close, exact, economical German spirit. The first time I made a small purchase in Germany I got a pocketful of change. Mrs. Morgan wanted a little money, and I gave her a couple of handfuls. She said she didn’t want so much, as she only intended to buy inexpensive things. I had actually given her about fifty cents. When one hundred copper coins make twenty-five cents and theyare used in most transactions, you can realize what a heavy load you carry and how you can get that wealthy feeling without much actual expense.
Soon after leaving Constance our road turned away from the Rhine, and going through a tunnel we were in the valley of the Danube. It startled me a little, as I had always connected the Danube with Austria and Turkey. But sure enough, we were riding along the banks of the Danube, which has been made famous by history, poetry and music. If a raindrop fell on one side of that hill it would go down to the Rhine to the Baltic, and if the wind blew it over to the other side before it struck the earth it would start eastward and journey down the Danube to the Black sea. Rivers are like human beings,—they get their directions from the place where they start and go onward along the road of least resistance to the place appointed, unless dammed or taken up by man or God, in which case they will struggle and work to seep back to the channel in which it was intended they should make their course.
By the way, the “Beautiful Blue Danube” is not blue at all in this part of its career, but almost black, seemingly taking its hue from the forests in which it has its origin.
The town of Triberg is a quaint little place near the top of the mountain, and apparently about one hundred miles from Nowhere. I have had my first experience with what I understand is not infrequentin old German towns. There is a tax on strangers, thirty pfennigs a day or one mark a week, and our hotel has to pay and charge in our bill. Ministers of the gospel, and paupers, are exempt. In America if they had a fool tax like that they would also exempt newspaper men. The only way I could get out of paying the tax was to make affidavit that I was a minister or a pauper, so I reluctantly gave up the offer to dodge taxation and the town of Triberg is fifteen cents to the good on account of our stay. However, there is a very fine waterfall, and we looked fifteen cents’ worth at that and called it even.