He did his utmost to endeavour to kindle a
little enthusiasm in me on the subject of this valuable febrifuge.
When not talking of quinine, he kept silence. This singular youth
was obsessed with a passionate devotion to the lucrative drug.
The Harz Mountains are pretty without being grand. The far-famed
Brocken is not 4000 ft. high, but rising as these hills do out of
the dead-flat North German plain, the Harz have been glorified and
magnified by a people accustomed to monotonous levels, and are the
setting for innumerable German legends. The Brocken is, of course,
the traditional scene of the "Witches Sabbath" on Walpurgis-Nacht,
and many of the rock-strewn valleys seem to have pleasant
traditions of bloodthirsty ogres and gnomes associated with them.
There is no real climbing in the Harz, easy tracks lead to all the
local lions. As is customary in methodical Germany, signposts
direct the pedestrian to every view and every waterfall, and I
need hardly add that if one post indicates the Aussichtspunkt, a
corresponding one will show the way to the restaurant without
which no view in Germany would be complete.
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