Pirna is near the beginning [properly END, but we start from Dresden] or western extremity of Saxon Schweitz.

Schandau, almost at the opposite or eastern extremity, is still more picturesque; standing on the delta of a little Brook, with high rock-cliffs, with garden-shrubberies, sanded walks, tufts of forest-umbrage; a bright- painted, almost OPERATIC-looking place,--with spa-waters, if I recollect: "yes truly, and the "Bath Season" making its packages in great haste, breaking up prematurely, this Year (1756)!-- Directly on arriving at Gross-Sedlitz, Friedrich takes ocular survey of this Country, which is already not unknown to him.

He finds that the Saxons have secured themselves within the Mountains; a rocky streamlet, Brook of Gottleube, which issues into Elbe just between Gross-Sedlitz and them, "through a dell of eighty or a hundred feet deep," serving as their first defence; well in front of the mere rocky Heights and precipices behind it, which stretch continuously along to southward, six miles or more, from Pirna and the south brink of Elbe.

At Langen-Hennersdorf, which is the southernmost part, these Heights make an elbow inwards, by Leopoldshayn, towards the Konigstein, which is but four miles off; here too the Saxons are defended by a Brook (running straight towards Konigstein, this one) in front of their Heights; and stand defensive, in this way, along a rock-bulwark of ten miles long: the passes all secured by batteries, by abatis, palisades, mile after mile, as Friedrich rides observant leftward: behind them, Elbe rushing swifter through his rock-walls yonder, with chasms and intricate gorges; defending them inexpugnably to rear.

Six miles long of natural bulwark (six to Hennersdorf), where the gross of the Saxons lie; then to Konigstein four other miles, sufficiently, if more sparsely, beset by them.