Copy 1, Volume 1

Austria / By Peter Evan Turnbull.

  • Turnbull, Peter Evan, 1786-1852.
Date:
1840
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Austria / By Peter Evan Turnbull. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    V.] JOURNEY TO GASTEIN. 143 prison-like offices, above which was a story of toler¬ ably sized rooms with small deep windows, and rather low flat ceilings. Ascending to the second floor, we seemed to have arrived, by a sort of inverted progress, at the crypt of an ancient church. The whole cen¬ tral part of the building here formed a huge damp dark hall, sixty feet long, by twenty-five wide, with a central and two side ranges of short thick pillars of reddish marble, resting on the stone pavement below, and supporting a low vaulted stone ceiling above. From this hall opened various bed-rooms; and on one side of it a continuation of the stone staircase led to another floor of bed-rooms above, separated from the roof by a range of attics.—Such are the houses of Salzburg, The sovereignty of this antique city has passed away. Its wealth and luxury exist no longer. Its noblest inhabitants have gone forth into other lands, but its edifices seem destined to last for eternity. On leaving Salzburg, the traveller may either pro¬ ceed at once to Ischel and to Salzkammergut, or first make an excursion to the baths of Gastein, distant about eighty English miles towards the south, in the chain of the Noric Alps. Ours was the latter course, and, as we had anticipated, we found it replete with interest and enjoyment. For the first sixty miles the road follows, or rather ascends beside, the course of the Salzach, through a deep narrow vale, which abounds in objects of curious