The pastors drive about on sledges in the winter to visit one another, and form often very agreeable little parties. At these visits, so much attention, friendship, and hospitality is disjjlayed, particularly in the form of cakes, coffee, good dinners, !^'c., that the g-uests readily prolong their stay for a few days. We foreigners are seldom so patient, and are not fond of staying so long tit (ine house, for which the Pastor of Edwahlen rcproadiod me kindly wlioii I took leave of him the next day.
I luid still another castle in the neighbourhood to visit, wliioh cxciti-d my curiosity on account of the stories connected with it : this was All-
THE MOST NORTHERLY p:STATES. 317
schwangen. This estate formerly belonged to a Count von Schwerin, who, while travelling abroad, apostatized from the Lutheran faith, and became a Catholic. On returning to his estates, he ordered all his serfs to apostatize with him, and where they did not allow themselves to be converted by fair means, he enforced Catholicism with flogging and the torture. His wife, who had mediated with the tyrant for some poor peasants, he one day threw out of a window of his castle into the moat beneath, where she died. The property of this barbarian was afterwards forfeited, and became crown-land ; the inhabitants, however, are still Cathol ics. Their religion has altered their character, and they enjoy but a bad reputation in the surrounding district. The body of Count Schwerin lies still enthe and uncorrupted in the church vaults. The Protestants of the neighbourhood say that he does not decay because he is never to reach heaven ; while the CathoKc peasants of Allschwangen, who have long ago forgotten vvhat good Protestants they once were, ascribe the circumstance to his canonization.
Three miles above the mouth of the Windau stands the little town of Pilten, which was once the capital of a bishopric that in many respects was entirely independent of the dtikedom. At the mouth itself is the town of Windau, the most northerly in Courland. It is the second harbour in the province, and forms a sort of miniature copy of Libau. It would, indeed, be almost too insignificant to deserve mention here, were it not for the prospect it has of one day rising into importance. The Windau river, at whose mouth it Ues, rises in Lithuania, and flows through Courland from south to north. Its som'ce is close to the Niemen, which is navigable very high up. It is, therefore, intended to connect the two rivers by a canal so as to make the Windau serve as a mouth to the Niemen, whose own mouth lies out of the Russian territory, and by this means to draw to the town of Windau the whole wood trade of Lithuania, which at present employs many hundreds of warehouses and mills at Tilsit and Memel. This project is at present, however, at a stand still, for some unexplained reasons.
I did not myself visit Windau, but proceeded straight northward from Goldingen.
For six miles nothing pecuUar presented itself, excepting the boards which served as milestones, and pointed out the boundaries of the different estates. " Paddegen estate" on one side of the ditch, and on the other " Grauduppen estate," then " Oseln estate," and " Ronnen estate." All the land belongs to the great nobles, and nowhere do the free possessions of small proprietors, or the territories of independent cities, intersect these large domains. In England and Germany the variety of subdivisions give the country the appearance of a fine diminutive Mosaic. Here all is coarse, massive, in huge blocks. One great territory follows another, until at length, on the northernmost point of the peninsula, the estate of Dondangen, hke a gigantic key-stone, crowns the edifice.
318 THE MOST NORTHERLY ESTATES.
The extreme end of a country, the point of a peninsula, round which foams the mighty sea, has always a particular charm of its own ; on the one side lies the whole mass of country and of population, on the otlier, the boundless expanse, the desert waste of waters. Such points generally afford many peculiar phenomena for observation. They are usually very barren, and exposed to storms, like the pinnacle of a tower, or tlie corner of a house ; they are lonely, isolated, little visited by travellers, and excluded from the busy every-day world. Perhaps it was ideas like these that made me particularly anxious to visit the northernmost point of the Courland peninsula.