My holiday in Austria

https://archive.org/details/myholidayinaustr00ede?q=Repository+hallstadt

My holiday in Austria

by Eden, Lizzie Selina. [from old catalog]

Publication date 1869

Publisher London, Hurst and Blackett Collection library_of_congress; americana

Digitizing sponsor The Library of Congress

Contributor The Library of Congress

A family of Prussians were recently hastily summoned away by the intelligence that a brother had been thrown from his carriage and seriously hurt.

Before they got far on their journey another telegram reached them to say he was dead. A foreign doctor in one of the hotels also dropped down dead, and a Count of Austria died from a cancer in the mouth, caused only by a burn from a cigar. In short, funeral processions were constantly passing, and the funeral march was frequently heard.

In such a small place it seemed very dreary, and I was extremely glad to start with a friend on a little expedition into Styria.

We went the first day to Hallstadt, not very far from Ischl; but the heat was too great to allow of much travelling.

Hallstadt is a very picturesque little village, perched on ledges of rock, and built down so close to the edge of the lake, that the base of most of the dwellings terminates in a boat-house; boats here taking the place of carts and wheel-barrows.

Hallstadt is nearly spoilt by a very ugly new church, and by crowds of tourists, who swarm in all the little inns. These visitors enjoy the views in sedan-chairs, or feed the fish in the lake from the numerous summer-houses that the inn gardens contain.

If the views of lake, mountain, and waterfall are lovely about Hallstadt, most certainly the inhabitants are not ; and it makes one‘s heart sick to see the number of idiots, horribly deformed people, and dwarfs that you meet at every turn. It is perfectly appalling to think that only about every third person is like a rational, full-grown human being.

A gentleman whom I met there, who had travelled far and wide, said in all his journeys he had never seen such a stricken place, except in some of the leper towns in Sweden. It really seems as if the curse of some fearful sentence was on Hallstadt.

We took a boat from Hallstadt, and were rowed over the lake to a cluster of cottages, I believe called Obertraun. On the way we were shown a cross erected by the side of the lake, where a boat full of holiday peasants was upset, and all in it drowned, by the sudden descent of one of those mountain hurricanes which make the Hallstadt one of the most dangerous lakes for boats in all Austria.

Tourists may therefore rejoice over the small steamer which plies several times

When we landed at Obertraun we had to wait for a conveyance, as all the village was haymaking. Our Jehu was a highly respectable and no doubt opulent farmer, who came somewhat unwillingly from his work, and harnessed his good stout horse into his Einspanner cart.

At first we went along rather moodily, the farmer casting regretful glances back at his merry band of hay-makers.

Presently, however, a sudden grip in the road sent us all with a bound into the air, and made us both burst out with a hearty laugh, in winch the farmer joined, and we immediately fraternised. He told us he had given twenty pounds for his horse, such a capital, strong beast, with a glossy black coat.

At the end of the journey we were quite sorry to part, and he agreed at some future time to make a long trip into Styria with us.