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AGRICULTURE OX THE RHINE.
so great a discharge of water from the atmosphere that
its weight entails sudden destruction on all that it may
strike. Trees are rooted up, and hurled down the tor-
rents momentarily formed. Cattle grazing are carried off,
and houses, if struck by the full force of the deluge, are
thrown down and washed from their sites. The infliction
is one to which mountainous districts are most subject.
That we have not exaggerated the mischief thus done,
will be best attested by the description of a cloudbreak
which occurred in 1818, at Miinstereifel, and destroyed
nearly the whole town. We extract it from Professor
E. M. Arndt’s recently published ζ Wanderings round
Godesberg,’ feeling, as every one must who knows the
author or his story, that where he takes up the pen, others
may well lay it down.
“It is nearly twenty-six years since the lovely spring
weather (I think on the fourth of May), induced me and
my friend Hiillmann to take a drive along the hills to
Brühl. Towards evening we were warned homewards
from a ramble under the oaks and beech trees of the park,
by an accumulation of thick dark clouds, out of which
irregular vivid flashes broke. It soon grew pitch dark,
and a hail-shower was followed by a violent thunder-
storm, and such heavy rain, that the road we drove home
by was broken up in different places. This storm was
destined to renovate Munstereifel. The tempest had
discharged a ‘ cloudbreak ’ over the town, which tore up
the banks and weirs of the rivulet, carrying with it.
bridges, mills, houses, in its wild track, and destroying
whole streets in the town, which have since been rebuilt.
Situated in a glen between lofty hills down which the
brook winds its serpentine course, the traveller cannot
Agricultlke on the Rhine.
79
recognise in the shallow waters of its summer bed the
ravaging violence of the torrents that pour down it when
snow melts suddenly, or thunder-storms discharge their
waters into it.”
The summits, whose flattened surface, although inter-
sected by deep ravines, form what may be called the pla-
teau of the Eifel, are, as has been said, of volcanic form-
ation. Not the tufa that around Naples spreads fertility
and abundance, but rather the lava that surrounds Rome
in the bleak and naked Campagna, is the chief formation
in this district, which the tourist crosses on his way to
the Mere of Laach. The Lake of Laach (an evident
tautological appellation) fills the crater of an extinct
volcano of the largest size, and similar lakes or meres,
called “ Maare ” in the neighbourhood, to the number of
twenty-seven, have been discovered. This portion of the
Rhenish province of Prussia is the poorest in arable land
of the whole kingdom. The irregular elevated surface
is covered with bog, and the thin coating of soil does not
afford nourishment for the roots of trees. Every valley,
however, is inhabited, and on the rapid slopes along the
banks of the Ahr and towards the Rhine vines and fruit-
trees produce valuable crops. The wildest part of these
highlands is called the Snow Eifel, and rises in the circle
of Priim to the height of 2100 feet.
In the valleys falling into the Rhine, and in the valley
of the Rhine itself, the cultivation of fruit is the great
resource of the peasant landowners. Every piece of cul-
tivated land, or of land fit for cultivation, is covered with
walnut, apple, pear, or cherry trees. The commune of
Riibenach can show that the village revenues draw
annually 10,000 francs from Coblenz for cherries alone,