Explore "The Mountain of Venus" by Sabine Baring-Gould on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Ragged, bald, and desolate, as though a curse rested upon it, rises the HA∂rselberg out of the rich and populous land between Eisenach and Gotha, looking, from a distance, like a huge stone sarcophagus -- a sarcophagus in which rests in magical slumber, till the end of all things, a mysterious world of wonders.
High up on the north-west flank of the mountain, in a precipitous wall of rock, opens a cavern, called the HA∂rselloch, from the depths of which issues a muffled roar of water, as though a subterraneous stream were rushing over rapidly-whirling millwheels. "When I have stood alone on the ridge of the mountain," says Bechstein, "after having sought the chasm in vain, I have heard a mighty rush, like that of falling water, beneath my feet, and after scrambling down the scarp, have found myself -- how, I never knew -- in front of the cave. " ("Sagenschatz des ThA1/4ringes-landes," 1835.)