Read the inscriptions, too, in their quaint German. Some of them are as humourous as the epitaphs in New England graveyards. Iremember one which ran like this:
Here lies Elias Queer, Killed in his sixtieth year;Scarce had he seen the light of day When a waggon-wheel crushed his life away.
And there is another famous one which says:
Here perished the honoured and virtuous maiden, G.V.
This tablet was erected by her only son.
But for the most part a glance at these Marterl und Taferl, which are so frequent on all the mountain-roads of the Tyrol, will give you a strange sense of the real pathos of human life. If you are a Catholic, you will not refuse their request to say a prayer for the departed; if you are a Protestant, at least it will not hurt you to say one for those who still live and suffer and toil among such dangers.
After we had walked for four hours up the Tauernthal, we came to the Matreier-Tauernhaus, an inn which is kept open all the year for the shelter of travellers over the high pass that crosses the mountain-range at this point, from north to south. There we dined.