An Immense Number Of Crucifixes On The Road Attest And Command The
Devotion Of The People.
How Kotzebue can call Innspruck a dirty town I am at a loss to conceive.
He
must have visited it during very rainy weather; for to me it appears one of
the cleanest and most chearful towns I have ever seen. There are several
very fine buildings, for instance the Jesuits' College, and the Franciscan
monastery; Nothing can be more picturesque than the situation of this city
in the valley of the Inn and its romantic windings. The suburbs are very
extensive and can boast several fine houses. The cupola of the Government
House is gilded, which gives it a splendid appearance. In the Hofkirche
or church of the court there are a number of statues, large as life, in
bronze; among which my guide pointed out to me those of Clovis, Godfrey of
Bouillon, Albert the Wise, Charles V, Philip II of Spain, Rudolph of
Hapsburgh, and to my great astonishment the British King Arthur; there were
twenty-eight statues altogether. But on my return to my inn, I found that
my guide had made a great error respecting King Arthur, and that the said
statue represented Prince Arthur, son of Henry VII, King of England, and
not the old Hero of Romance; and my hostess' book further informed me that
these statues were those of the Kings and Princes belonging to families
connected by descent and blood with Maximilian I. In the same Hofkirche
is a fine monument erected to Maximilian and a statue of bronze of this
Emperor is figured kneeling between four bronze figures representing four
Virtues. In the gardens of the Palace of the Archduke Ferdinand in this
city is a fine equestrian statue which rests entirely on the hind feet of
the horse. From Innspruck there is a water passage by the river Inn all the
way to Vienna, as the Inn flows into the Danube at Passau. The banks of the
Inn are so romantic and picturesque that I would willingly prolong my
sejour at Innspruck, but as I mean to take the journey from Mittenwald to
Munich by the river Isar, I must take advantage of the raft which starts
from that place the day after to-morrow.
MUNICH, 20th July.
I left Innspruck in a chaise de poste on the 16th, and arrived the same
evening at five o'clock at Mittenwald. At a short distance before I arrived
at Mittenwald, I entered the Bavarian territory, which announces itself by
a turnpike gate painted white and blue, the colours and Feldzeichen of
Bavaria. In the Austrian territory the barriers are painted black and
yellow, these being the characteristic colors of Austria.
Mittenwald is a small neat town, offering nothing remarkable but a church
yard or Ruhe-garten (garden of repose) as it is called, where there are a
number of quaint inscriptions on the tombstones. At Mittenwald I had some
trouble about my passport, as it was not vise by a Bavarian authority;
but I explained to the officer that I had never fallen in with any Bavarian
authority since I left Rome, and that, while at Rome, I had no intention of
going thro' Bavaria; that at Milan the Austrian authorities had vise my
passport for Vienna and that I should only pass thro' Munich, without
making a longer stay than one week.
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