As I have bespoke your company, upon our journey into Silesia, I begin this letter at our first resting station from Berlin— Hitherto we have indeed seen little more than the usual Brandenburg sands, & 310 perhaps you will find our tour as tiresome as we have found it ourselves— I cannot promise you an amusing journey, though I hope it will prove so to us;1 & if at the sight of this my first letter on this occasion, you think it looks too long, & appears likely to prove tiresome, seal it up, unread, & send it to Quincy, where a mother’s heart will fill it with all the interest of which it may be destitute in itself—Will give life to the narrative, & spirit to every remark.— My letters to you on this tour will be in the form & serve as the substitute of a journal— They will of course be fragments written at different times & places, nay perhaps in different humours— Therefore make up your account, to receive patiently all my tediousness, or as I said before, bestow it all upon my mother, to whom in that case you may consider all my future letters untill we return to Berlin, & numbered in a series from this, as addressed.

On Thursday the 17th: instt. we left Berlin just after three in the morning, & arrived here at about nine the same evening— The distance is ten German miles & a quarter, which you know is a very long day’s journey in this country— In the course of a few years it will be an easy journey of eight hours; for the present king, who has the very laudable ambition of improving the roads through his dominions, is now making a turn pike road like that to Potsdam, the whole way hither; as yet not more than one German mile of it is finished, & the rest of the way, is like that which on every side surrounds the Tadmor of modern times—2 As we approach within a few miles of Frankfort, the country becomes somewhat more hilly, & of course more variagated & pleasant than round Berlin; but we could peceive little difference in the downy softness of the ground beneath us, or in the needles of the pines within our view— Part of the country is cultivated as much as it is succeptible of cultivation, & here & there we could see scattered spires of wheat, rye, barley & oaths, shoot from the sands, like the hairs upon a head almost bald— We came through few villages, & those few had a miserable appearance— A meagre composition of mud & thatch composed the cottages, in which a ragged & pallid race of beggars reside; yet we must be unjust & confess that we passed by one nobleman’ seat, which had the appearance of a handsome & comfortable house.

We arrived here just in time to see the last dregs of an annual fair, such as you have often seen in the towns of Holland, & as you know are customary in those of Germany— But we hear great complaints against the minister Struensee, for having ruined the value of the fair, by prohibiting the sale of foreign wollen manufactures, which 311 have heretofore been the most essential articles of sale at this fair—3 This prohibition is for the sake of encouraging the manufactures of this country; a principle, which the government pursues on all possible occasions— They are not converts to the opinions of Adam Smith, & the french oeconomists concerning the balance of trade, & always catch with delight at any thing, which can prevent money from going out the country. Of this disposition we have seen a notable instance in the attempts lately made here for producing sugar from beets, of which I believe you heard something while you were here, & about which much has been said & done since then. At one time we were assured beyond all question, that one mile square of beets would furnish sugar for the whole Prussian dominions— The question was submitted to a committee of the Academy of Sciences, who after long examination & deliberation reported, that in truth, sugar, & even brandy, could be produced from beets, & in process of time might be raised in great quantities; but that for the present it would be expedient to continue the use of sugars & brandies such as had been in use hitherto— Since this report we have heard little, or nothing of beet sugar.4

This is an old Town, pleasantly situated, & containing about twelve thousand inhabitants, of which a quarter part are Jews— It is therefore distinguished by those peculiarities, which mark all European towns, where a large proportion of Israelites reside, & to express which I suppose resort must be had to the Hebrew language— The english at least is inadequate to it; for the word filth conveys an idea of spotless purity in comparison to the jewish nastiness— The garrison of the town consits of one regiment— There is likewise an University here, & by the introduction of a letter from Berlin we have become acquainted with two of the professors—5 The number of the students is less than two hundred; & of them, one hundred & fifty are students of Law, ten or fifteen of Divinity, & not more than two, or three, of medicine— The library, the museum, & the botanical garden, the professors tell me, are all so miserable that they are ashamed to show them.

The banks of the Oder on one side are bordered with small hills, upon which at small distances, are little summer houses with vineyards at which during summer, many inhabitants of the town reside— On the other side the land is flat, & the river is restrained from overflowing only by a large dyke, which has been built since the year 1785— At that time the river broke down the smaller dyke, which had untill then existed, & overflowed the country to a 312 considerable extent— Prince Leopold of Brunswick, a brother of the present reigning duke, was then colonel of the regiment in garrison here, & lost his life in attempting to save some of the people, whom the inundation was carrying away— You have probably seen prints of this melancholy accident, & there is an account of it in the last editions of Moore’s travels. (I mean his first work.) There is a small monument erected in honor of the prince, upon the spot where the body was found.6 It was done by the free masons of this place; of which society he was a member— But there is nothing remarkable in it— There is likewise in the burying ground a little monument, or rather tombstone, to Kleest, one of the most celebrated German poets, whom his countrymen call their Thomson— He was an officer in the service of Frederic the second, & was killed at the battle of Cunersdorf, a village distant only a couple of miles from this place.7

Just at the gate of the town, there is a spring of mineral water, at which a bathing house has been built with accommodations for lodgers— This bath has been considerably frequented for some years past; & the physicians of the town say that the waters are as good as those of Freyenwalde. I am willing to believe them as good as Toplitz; for my faith in mineral waters in general was not much edified by the success of our tour there last summer.8

Still at Frankfurt— We had left Berlin, without being fully aware of the precise nature of the journey we had undertaken, & had not thought of taking with us furs, & winter cloathing for a tour in the dog days— But one of the professors, whose acquaintance we have made here, has formerly gone the same journey, and from his representations, we have been induced to send back to Berlin for thick cloathing, & this circumstance has prolonged our stay here, a couple of days more than we at first intended— Yesterday we took a ride of three, or four miles to the country seat of a Mr de Schöning, the Landrath of the circle— The functions of his Office are to collect the territorial taxes within a certain district called a circle, which is a subdivision of the province— You know the importance & extent of this title of Rath, or councillor, in the constitutions of the German states— It is a general name designating every officer in all the subordinate parts of the administration; & sometimes a mere honorary title, which Frederic the second by way of joke once granted to a person, upon condition, that he should never presume to give any council— For the principle upon which the name is founded is, that 313 the person holding the title gives the king occasionally, council; & the first part of it usually designates the particular department in which he gives it—

Mr Schöning & his lady received us with great kindness & hospitality—9 From the neighbouring of their house, & on our return we had the pleasure of agreable prospects of the town, the river & the country beyond it; though this has not much variety, nor any thing remarkably striking.

Not far beyond Mr Schöning’ house is a canal, joining the Oder to the Spree, by means of which a water communication is established between the Baltic & the North Sea; there is likewise a similar canal between the Oder & the Vistula.— Frederic the second made several of these junctions of rivers during his reign, & some had been made by his predecessors. Their benefit in facilitating the intercourse between the several parts of Germany, & of all with Poland would be still greater than it is, if it were not counteracted by that mutual jealousy, which bars the passages between the dominions of neighbouring & rival princes—

At a distance of about two German miles from this, resides Count Finkenstein of Madlitz, a son of the venerable old Minister of State, who died last winter; & whose lady & daughters you have seen at Berlin— He was formerly President of the judicial tribunal at Cüstrin, but was dimissed by Frederic the second, on the occasion of the Miller Arnold’s famous law suit—An instance in which the great king from mere love of justice, committed the greatest injustice, that ever cast a shade upon his character— His anxiety upon that occasion to prove to the world that his in his courts of justice, the beggar should be upon the same footing of right as the prince, made him forget that in substantial justice the maxim ought to bear alike upon both sides, & that the prince should obtain his right as much as the begger— Count Finkenstein, & several other judges of the court at Cüstrin, together with the high chancellor Fürst, were all dismissed from their places for doing their duty, & persisting in it, contrary to the will of the king, who substituting his ideas of natural equity in the place of prescriptions of positive law, treated them with the utmost severity, for conduct, which ought to have received his fullest approbation.— Since that time Count Finkenstein has lived upon this estate of his, cultivating his farm, & in the converse of the Muses; we have not had time & opportunity during our stay here to visit him; he & his family being at this time absent from his seat; but we are told that no lands in the province are in so 314 flourishing a condition as his; & as he unites the pursuits of literature with those of farming, he has published a translation of Theocritus in German verse—10 We propose to continue our Journey this day as far as Crossen—

Your’s—11

Yesterday morning early we took our departure from Freystadt, & came to this place; a distance of eight german miles; five of which are in single stage from Sprotau here— The face of the country has visibly & greatly improved as we came along; & although we still had to wade through miles of sands more, or less deep, we were frequently relieved by patches of good roads, & by beautiful fields of wheat, rye, barley, oats, & especially flax, which appeared in a highly flourishing condition. As it happens to be just now harvest time, we passed many groups of reapers; a sight of which would have afforded us more satisfaction, had we not known, that they were far from gathering the bounties of the season for themselves, & had they not by frequently soliciting our charity proved the wretchedness of their condition— We had travelled through Saxony, a part of the march, & a corner of Bohemia last year at this time, & then too had met many a company of reapers— We had seen several last week, as we came from Berlin; but we had never seen them beg— Since we entered Silesia, yesterday & the day before, certainly more than twenty times, as we passed by troops of peasants of both sexes, who were gathering the harvest, a woman from among them, & sometimes two, or three ran from the fields to our carriage, with a little bunch of flowers, tied up with some ears of the grain they were gathering, which they threw into the carriage at the windows, by way 316 of begging for a dreyer, or half a grosh—1 The reason of this is, because the condition of the peasant in Silesia is much worse than in the electorate— For although personal servitude exists alike in both provinces, yet the serf in the March is never obliged to labour for his Lord, more days than there are— In Silesia, he is often obliged to furnish ten days in a week. Judge then after the man & his wife have both labored five days in seven for the lord, what sort of subsistance they can earn in the remaining two, (one of which is a sunday) for themselves.

This so little travelling through this country, that unless post horses are bespoken before hand, they must be waited for, untill they can be brought in by some peasant from the fields. Thus we were obliged to stop yesterday three hours at Sprotau, & to employ the time went round the town to see whatever of remarkable it contained— It is a small place with about two thousand inhabitants, one third of whom are catholics— It stands upon the Bober a small branch of the Oder, which likewise runs through this town, but is too small to be navigable, & only serves at Sprotau, to give motion to a number of corn mills & fulling mills, which we saw fully employed. The manufactory of broad cloth is likewise carried on at Sprotau, at Freystadt & indeed in all the towns in this part of Silesia, though in none of them excepting Goldberg, to so great an extent as at Grünberg.

In Sprotau there is a convent of nuns, dedicated to St: Mary Magdalen, who not being so liberal in their open intercourse with our sex as their great patroness, could not be visited by me.2 But Louisa went to see them— It seems they were not so well acquainted with, or so highly reverent of the name of Adams, as the worthy magistrates of Freystadt; for being informed we were Americans, they took it for granted we were Turks, & were under no small apprehension least Louisa, & Epps should be turkish men in disguise. The old ladies, for they are all declining far into the vale of years, began to tremble for their chastity, knowing it to be a thing for which the turks have very little respect— You, who know how much my wife & her maid look like Turkish ravishers, will perhaps be suspicious, that the alarms of the pious sisterhood are wont to be in the inverted proportion to the dangers that may threaten their most precious jewel.

We went over the catholic church, which joins upon the nunnery, & is alike dedicated to Mary Magdelen. Of the pictures hung round 317 the church, & the alter pieces, those, which represent here were alone tolerable. There was an immage, modeled upon the famous one of our Lady at Loretto, which Buonaparte took the liberty of sending to Paris, about four years ago—3 The most remarkable thing I met in the church was a paper posted up, on the inner side of a confessional; written in Latin, & containing a list of the sins to which the ordinary priest was forbidden to grant absolution, as being expressly reserved for the consideration of the holy father himself— I expected to have found at least some heinous crimes upon the list, but unless the murder of a priest may be considered of that denomination, there was not one. The offences were—burying an heretic in holy ground—reading the books of the heretics, without a special licence—refusing to pay tithes—& about a dozen others all of the same stamp—all having some reference to the papal authority— Observe particularly, that the unpardonable crime of reading heretical books is expressed in terms so vague & comprehensive (libros hereticorum) that they may be construed by the priest to mean almost any books he pleases— And this paper is publickly posted in a country where the catholics themselves are but a tolerated sect, the subjects of a protestant sovereign. It is possible indeed that the restraints of the romish church upon its followers may be more rigorous & more public in such a country, than where its authority is unquestioned & unopposed— Silesia was originally under the Austrian government, a catholic province; at this time, about one half of its inhabitants still adhere to that religion, & although the steady maxims of the prussian Government, & still more the revolutions of time & opinions have powerfully operated to introduce a spirit of mutual forbearance, if not of harmony, there is perhaps no part of Europe, where the root of bitterness between the two parties is yet so deep, & cleaves with such stubbornness to the ground as here— The catholics hate the protestants the more, for their having now the secure & unlimited liberty in their worship; & the protestants envy the catholics the priviledges they still retain, which the Prussian government has bound itself to preserve.4 Mr Zölner, who has published his tour through Silesia, made in the year 1791, & from whom I draw much of the information I give you, says, that it is common here for a catholic to exhibit, before a Lutheran judge, a complaint against another catholic, for calling him a Lutheran, & requiring satisfaction for what he considers as the blackest slander that could be cast upon him.5

About halfway between Sprotau, & this place we first came in sight of the mountains towards which we are travelling, & from which we are still about forty of our miles distant.

Before I give you an account of our journey hither, I must say something of what we saw yesterday at Bunzlau, & which I had not time to tell you, before we continued our journey.

The principal manufactory of Bunzlau, is in pottery; particularly of those brown coffee pots & milk pots, of which you have seen many at the inns of Berlin & through the electorate— Of these potters there are at Bunzlau, each of whom employs six or eight workmen— We saw them make several large pots such as are commonly used to hold butter— From a cubic mass of clay, about a foot thick, they form in about five minutes, the pot, by merely moulding it with the hand, while it whirls round upon a sort of circular bench placed before the workman— We could not however stay long to see them, for they work in the same room, where the Ovens are heated to bake the pots, & its warmth was to us intolerable— In the yard of this pottery, there is a pot of prodigious size, made about half a century ago, which contains nearly fifty bushels— It is about twelve feet high; is hooped like a barrel, which it resembles in form, & is kept in a house built on purpose for it— The Germans appear to have a particular predilection for things of an uncommon dimensions in their kind; the tuns of Heidelberg & Königstein, & this pot serve as examples to show how much size enters into their ideas of the sublime.6

But the greatest curiosities at Bunzlau, are two mechanical genius’s by the name of Jacob, & of Hüttig, a carpenter, & a weaver, who are next door neighbours to each other— The first has made a machine, in which by the means of certain clock work a number of puppets about six inches high, are made to move upon a kind of stage, so as to represent in several successive scenes the passion of Jesus Christ— The first exibits him in the garden at prayer, while the three apostles are sleeping at a distance. In the last he is shewn dead, in the sepulchre, guarded by two roman soldiers— The intervening scenes represent the treachery of Judas; the examination of Jesus before Caiaphas, the dialogue between Pilate & the jews, concerning him; the denial of Peter, the scourging & the crucifixion— It is all accompanied by a mournful dirge of music, & the maker, by way of explanation repeats the passages of scripture, which relates the events 319 he has undertaken to show— I never saw a stronger proof how powerful the impression of objects, which are brought immediately home to the senses is— I have heard & read more than one eloquent sermon, upon the passion, but I confess, none of their most labored efforts at the pathetic, ever touched my heart with one half the force of this puppet show— The traitor’s kiss, the blow struck by the high priest’s servant, the scourging, the nailing to the cross, the spunge of vinegar, every indignity offered, & every pain inflicted, occasioned a sensation when thus made perceptible to the eye, which I had never felt at mere description; & when we rose to come away, Louisa’s eyes were full of tears.

Hüttig the weaver, with an equal, or superior mechanical genius, has applied it in a different manner, & devoted it to geographical, astronomical, & historical pursuits— In the intervals of his leasure from the common weaver’s work, which affords him subsistance, he has become a very learned man— The walls of his rooms are covered with maps & drawings of his own representing, here the course of the Oder, with all the towns & villages, through which it runs; there the mountains of Switzerland, & those of Silesia, over both of which, he has travelled in person— In one room he has two large tables, one raised above the other—on one of them he has ranged all the towns & remarkable places of Germany, & on the other of all Europe; they are placed according to their respective geographical bearings. The names of the towns are written on a small square piece of paper, & fixed in a slit on the top of a peg, which is stuck into the table. The remarkable mountains are shewn by small pyramidical black stones, & little white pyramids are stationed at all the spots, which have been distinguished by any great battle, or other remarkable incident— The man himself in explaining his work, shews abundance of learning relative to the antient names of places, & the former inhabitants of countries to which he points; & amused us with anecdotes of various kinds connected with the lands he has marked out. Thus in shewing us the Alps, he pointed to the spots over which the french army of reserve so lately passed, & where Buonaparte so fortunately escaped being taken by an austrian officer, & then he gave us a short comment of his own upon the character & extraordinary good fortune of the first consul.7 In a second room he has a large machine representing the copernican system of the universe; it is made so that the whole firmament of fixed stars moves round our solar system once in every twenty four hours, & thus always exhibits the stars in the exact position relative to our earth, in which they 320 really stand. Internally he has stationed all the planets, which belong to our system, with several satellites, & all the comets that have been observed during the last three centuries. In a third room he has another machine, exhibiting in different parts the various phases of the moon, & those of Jupiter’s satellites— The apparent motion of the sun round the earth, & the real motion of the earth round the sun.

In his garret he has another work, upon which he is yet occupied, & which being his last labor seems to be that in which he takes the most delight. Upon a very large table similar to that in the first room, he has inlaid a number of thin plates of wood formed so as to represent a projection of the earth upon Mercator’s plan. All the intervals between the plates of wood designate that portion of the world, which is covered with water. He has used a number of very small ropes of different colours drawn over the surface in such a manner as to describe the tracks of all the celebrated circumnavigators of the globe. The colours of the ropes distinguish the several voyages from each other. To three of these great adventurers, who he thinks claim especial preeminence above the rest Columbus, Anson & Cook, he has shewn a special honor by three little models of ships, bearing their names, which are placed upon the surface of his ocean, in some spot of their respective courses—8 The names of all the other voyagers, & the times at which their voyages, were performed, are marked by papers fixed at the points of their departure. Such is the imperfect description I can give you from a short view of the labours of this really curious man— He must be nearly, or quite seventy years old, & has all his life time been of an infirm constitution. But his taste for the sciences he told was hereditary in his family, & had been common to them all, from his great grandfather down to himself. His dress & appearance were those of a common weaver; but his countenance expressive at once of meditation & ingenuity; his eyes at once full of enthusiastic fire, & amiable good nature, was a model upon which Lavater might expatiate with exultation— He enquired who we were; & was as much transported at the names of American, & of Adams, as the magistrates of Freystadt— At these frequent & spontaneous expressions of respect shewn to our name, I hope neither you nor I shall feel any improper pride; at least our filial affection may be allowed to rejoyce at them. The honest & ingenious weaver, on our taking leave, made us smile by exclaiming, that now, if he could but have a traveller from Africa, come to see his works, he could boast of having had visitors from all the four quarters of the globe. Yours.9