five English miles. The White Main rises in the Fichtelgebirge, close to the Ochsenkopf mountain. Markgrave George William in 1717 surrounded its source with masonry, since which time it has been known as the Fürstenbrunnen, or Prince’s Well. But, as several sources contribute to the stream, it is as hard as in most other cases to fix on the authentic one. The Main is mostly a wide, shallow, superficial, and easy-going stream, and seems to have a general objection to the performance of tours de force, as it makes a wide bow to the north to avoid the Franconian table-land, turning south again to receive an accession of strength from the Regnitz at Bamberg, then north to avoid some more hills to Schweinfurt, then south again to take a degree at Würzburg, then north again to Lohr, then south again to round the soft sandstone mountains of the Spessart, instead of cutting them in two as the Rhine would have done and as the railway does (which loop constitutes the most beautiful part of its course), then, from Aschaffenburg flowing lazily on through the level past Frankfort, into the Rhine at Mainz.
Aschaffenburg may derive its name from the brook Aschaff (Ascaffa), meaning water that flows through tilled lands. The Romans called it Ascapha. It appears to have been, in A.D. 69, one of their most important stations, and was doubtless strongly fortified, as lying close to a very assailable point in the Limes Transrhenanus. A votive stone, now lost, was discovered in the last century, which recorded that an offering was made here by the eleventh British legion and the twenty-third to Jupiter Optimus Maximus, to the gods of Britain generally, and those of Mancunium or Manchester in particular. The eleventh and fourteenth legions, which went to Britain under Claudius in the year 43, were ordered by Vespasian to Germany and Dalmatia, and a considerable number of native troops had been enrolled with them. It does not appear that in those days Manchester was the metropolis of the Peace Society.
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Castle of Johannisburg.
