442 THE STORY OF MY LIFE [1857
slowly under the great purple Traunstein. At Gmiinden1 we dined at the little inn, served by ladies in gold helmets, with great silver chains round their necks. I drove on to the fall in an JEinspanner. It is a miniature Schaffhausen, and the colour of the water most beautiful. On the following day an old Colonel Woodruffe arid his wife took me with them to Hallstadt, where we were rowed by women in crimson petticoats down the lovely lake to the village. The scenery is magnificent — jagged mountains melting into beautiful chestnut woods which reach to the water's edge, and at the end of the lake the little town, with its picturesque wooden houses and beautiful gothic chapel. The population consists of nine hundred Roman Catholics and nine hundred Protestants, who live together most amicably. No vehicle can enter the town, for the streets are narrow gullies, with staircases from one house to another.
" My new friends left me at Hallstadt, and early next morning I was up, and in the forest, to see the Wildbach waterfall, an exquisite walk, through green glades carpeted with cyclamen and columbines, with great masses of moss-grown rock tossed about amongst the trees, and high mountains rising all around. The goats were just getting up and coming out of their sheds, ringing their little bells as they skipped about amongst the rocks, and the flowers were all glistening with dew — no human being moving, except the goatherds directing their flocks up the mountain paths. I reached the waterfall, in its wild amphitheatre of rock, before the sun, and saw the first rolling away of the morning mist, and the clear mountain torrent foaming forth in its place; while far beyond was the great snowy Dachstein.
" At nine, a little boat took me to the Gosauswang at the other end of the lake, and while I was waiting there for an JEinspanner, four travellers came up, one of whom — a crowded resort of royalty.