Formerly the town was
completely surrounded by walls, curtained on the hillside, reminding one
of Lucern's "coronal of towers." In the "brave days of old" the
trade-guilds were severally allotted their forts for the defence of the
town--no holiday task for volunteers, as in our "right little, tight
little island."
Though the dangers of the frontier are by no means a thing of the past,
the town walls and the towers are mainly in ruins, overgrown with wild
vines and other luxuriant vegetation. As no guidebook exists to tell one
what one ought to see, and where one ought to go, I had all the pleasure
of poking about and coming upon surprises. I was not aware that the
church at Kronstadt is about the finest specimen of fourteenth-century
Gothic in Transylvania, ranking second only to the Cathedral of Kashau
in Upper Hungary.
My first walk was to the Kapellenburg, a hill which rises abruptly from
the very walls of the town. An hour's climb through a shady zigzag
brought me to the summit. From thence I could see the "seven villages"
which, according to some persons, gave the German name to the province,
Siebenbuergen, "seven towns." The level Burzenland looked almost like a
green lake; beyond it the chain of the Carpathian takes a bend, forming
the frontier of Roumania. The highest point seen from thence is the
Schuelerberg, upwards of 8000 feet, and a little farther off the
Koenigstein, and the Butschrtsch, the latter reaching 9526 feet.
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