Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 8/Up the Moselle - Part 2

by George Carless Swayne

UP THE MOSELLE.

 

PART II.

It would be difficult to find a river on the map of Europe so long as the Moselle between Trêves and Coblentz, in proportion to the space it traverses, as measured by the flight of the crow. When it leaves Trêves it appears to do so with regret, for it looks back three times before it arrives at Berncastel. Between Berncastel and Cochem it is doubled back on itself six times in short, close folds, leaving peninsulas of land, the necks of which may be crossed on foot in a space of time out of all proportion to that taken by the steamer in going round the heads of them. Yet a rope or ribbon pushed together would give far too stiff and formal a notion of the waywardness of the course of this Mæander of the West. We might suppose its presiding goddess or nymph to have been a personage deficient in decision of character, to have had a vague desire to find out and join the Rhine, but the faintest possible notion of the direction in which that father of German rivers was to be found, and hoping to get into the right road by making casts, as a foxhunter would say, to all the points of the compass. Or the course of the river might be compared to the unwilling and erratic progress of a school-boy, doubting from time to time whether he would face the inevitable penalty of lateness, or play truant altogether for the day. In England there are such streams on a small scale,—deep, lazy brooks, wandering through loamy land, with the wastefulness of which good farmers have no patience, but turn the water into a rectilinear channel, and fill up the scoops and the loops, planting the banks with willows, and wattling them for precaution against the nibbling of the stream. They are such brooks as puzzle riders badly mounted, and tend to make the field generally select when crossed at their broadest. They have steep or perpendicular banks, sometimes hanging over at the top, especially apt to crumble away under the hind legs of horses, and to lead to a sudden cold bath in a muddy chasm, from which it is no easy matter to escape. In such a case it is difficult to say what determines the sluggish course of the waters, but we may suppose that they are in each case diverted from their straightforwardness by a patch of ground stiffer than that which lies about it. With regard to the Moselle, we may suppose its course retarded by geological accidents, such as basaltic masses harder than the circumjacent soil, thrust up through the tableland, through which, deeply sunken in vine-bearing slopes, it winds its leisurely course, as undecided and yet pedantic and punctual in its movements as the great German people itself.

Schiller, in one of his minor poems, speaks of the Moselle as the virgin of Lorraine and the bride of the Rhine. The sex of rivers, like that of most objects in nature which have sexes in other languages than our own, is perhaps arbitrary; yet in this case the fancy certainly has a degree of natural fitness. The beauty of the Moselle is feminine, while that of the Rhine is masculine.

The Rhine rises among the snows and glaciers, is brought up roughly, bathes himself clean in a great lake, knows the way he is going, sweeps through his upper course with a broad calm dignity, meets obstacles at Bingen and puts them sternly and vigorously aside lives down all opposition like a strong man, and below Bonn descends quietly and unobtrusively to his final resting-place in the North Sea. The Moselle is born among the pretty Vosges mountains, spends her childhood cheerfully in France, lives a capricious youth, each caprice having a charm of its own, till, surprised by the sturdy Rhine, she makes a happy marriage and is heard of no more. To contrast with the stern and dusky cliffs of the Rhine-land, on whose precious ledges the vine-terraces are artificially piled, we have the banks of the Moselle moulded into undulating slopes, wrapped in square miles on miles of fruit-bearing verdure, like the soft contours of a beautiful person covered with a green mantle such as the fabulous queens of the legend of King Arthur used to wear. And the wine of the Moselle has the same relation to that of the Rhine as the scenery of the respective rivers. Its bouquet is generally more delicate, its influence is more subtle, its taste is softer, it is more gentle in its effect on the brain, soothing rather than exciting to the nerves, a promoter of genial conversation rather than of noise, and on the whole so comparatively innocent in its operation, that a worthy priest of our acquaintance, who himself owned a vineyard, was fain to pronounce, ex cathedrâ, that to be drunk on Moselle wine was scarcely a sin. At all events, Moselle, especially the sparkling kind, is emphatically the ladies’ wine, and the lady of wines. The derivation of the name Moselle may not be obvious, but it is doubtless very simple, as are most of the names of rivers when inquired after. On looking at the map we see that the Meuse and the Moselle rise very close together in the highlands of the Vosges. The Meuse is Mosa in Latin, Maas in German; the Moselle is Mosella in Latin, and in German Mosel. On the upper waters of the Meuse, on the ancient maps, is a place called Mosa, and another further down. The words seem to have a relationship with the German “moos,” in English “a moor, moss, or morass.” Then it will be observed that the Moselle has a shorter course than the Meuse; at least, as it ends in the Rhine, it never attains the proportions of the latter river at its mouth. It is probable that Mosel is a diminutive of Maas, and that the name means “the smaller river of the moors.” A Roman of the name of Vetus, as we find from Tacitus, once entertained the bold design of uniting the Saone with the Moselle by a canal, by which the legions could have been transported through Gaul to the Rhine by first being floated up the Rhone. He was induced to desist for fear of ambitious motives being imputed to him. That the canal might have been made by the strong arms of the Roman soldiers, in spite of all engineering difficulties, there is little doubt; but the utility of the work would have been questionable, as in a dry summer the upper waters of the rivers in question would scarcely have been navigable, to judge by the experience of the steamers which ply even on the Lower Moselle.

Those who leave Paris by a train which starts in the evening, and can sleep through the dull night journey, will agreeably wake up on a fine summer’s morning on the Upper Moselle, in the neighbourhood of Metz. Here it is a softly-flowing river, with vineyards and white villages on the banks.

Oberstein.

From Trêves, downwards, the river Moselle assumes more of the character of a river in a gorge. Having seen Trêves under the July sun, 1862, we were minded to look at the Moselle in September, and with that view took the train from Frankfort to Oberstein on the Nahe, intending to cut across the land which intervenes between the Nahe and the Moselle, striking the latter river at Berncastel. The Nahe, like its tributary the Alsenz, which comes into it above Kreuznach, is the exaggeration of a stony-bedded brook overhung with rocks, many of great height and fantastic shapes, and betraying primeval volcanic convulsion. One of the most remarkable points on the Nahe is Oberstein. The little town is cramped on one side between the river and an immense wall of igneous rock, in many parts perpendicular, and even overhanging. Its shape is a rough pyramid. On the top of this rock is perched the Oberstein, or “upper stone,”—that is, the ancient castle. The newer castle, whose remains are richer, crowns the hill behind at a short distance, and is connected with the older building by a narrow causeway. It would be difficult to imagine a human habitation more resembling a crow’s nest; or rather, shall we not say of a relic so venerable, an eagle’s nest? Who the lords of Oberstein were who built and inhabited the castle, must in a great degree be matter of conjecture. Like those brave men who lived before Agamemnon, their deeds are lost in the night of the Past, because they are unrecorded by the sacred bard. It seems that they were pious as well as valiant, for halfway up the rock, and partly hewn out of it, nestles a very old church, which they appear to have built for the use of the subject townsmen. It is included in the ancient walls. Inside the church is a natural basin, where the most limpid water accumulates from the droppings of the rocks. It was probably used in former times as a reservoir, from which the holy water was taken, but this use has been forgotten since the church has become Protestant. Against the wall is a rude figure of an ancient knight, in alto-relievo, hewn out of sandstone; probably representing the founder of the church, and apparently of the eleventh or twelfth century.