18

WILDBAD.

CHAPT. I.

healthy, fine race, of good mental parts. The coolness of the water — the purity of the atmosphere, which does ahsorb much Oxygen from the balmy pine-forests, the simple and frugal mode of living, combined with the out-of-door em- ployment, prevailing everywhere, — all these causcs are contributing to act most favourably upon the physical Constitu­tion of the people. They are open, candid, hospitable and easily contented; the soldiers drafted from amongst them by conscription, gallant and persevering, but prone to de- stroying and spoiling. They are faithful to their prince, and attached to their homes, but the highest aim they strive at, is independence. Thus, though they might lead an easy life at home, if they would but hire out themselves as farm- labourers, they rather prefer the uncertain trade of pedling for years in foreign parts, with a small stock of gernian tinder, brushes, wooden clocks, glass-ware etc., enduring fatigues and hardships of every kind, until they can save up a sufficient sum, to return and build a loghouse of their own. This liowever is not the sole advantage they derive from this itinerant life, for they generally manage to pick up a good deal of information wliile thus engaged in foreign parts, and many* a travelling gentleman ere now has been agreeably surprised, to find humble peasants in the wild forest capable of conversing with bim in bis tongue.

As the Black Forest is belonging, almost to equal parts, to the Kingdom of Wurtemberg, and the Grandduchy of Baden, it might naturally be expected that the preceding re- marks do not apply indifferently to all parts of these moun- tains; particularly as the inhabitants are of different reli- gious opinions, those of the Badish portion professing the tenets of the Roman Catholic cliurch, wliile the German Protestant faith is prevailing in Wurtemberg. Still there exists more similarity between them than could be supposed.