Schaffhausen

shaf-how'zen, a city of Switzerland, the capital of a canton of the same name. It is situated on an eminence overhanging the Rhine. The population is about 15,000. There are manufactures of cotton and woolen goods and carriages, as well as distilleries, breweries, and other industries. The city is celebrated for its quaint architecture. A massive cathedral of the basilica pattern, dating from 1052, contains a celebrated parish bell bearing the date of 1486. It bears the following inscription: "Vivos voco; mortuos plango; fulgura frango" (I call the living; I lament the dead; I rend the lightning). The latter phrase has reference to an early belief that the bell of a church warded off bolts of lightning. The inscription suggested Schiller's celebrated Song of the Bell and Long-fellow"s Golden Legend. An old castle built in 1564 stands on a height commanding the town. It has the form of a round tower several stories high. The walls are sixteen feet in thickness. Instead of a stair-way, they contain a winding, inclined plane like the thread of a screw. Three miles below the city are the celebrated Falls of Schaffhausen. The Rhine, about 125 yards wide here, leaps a distance of about seventy feet, falling in three successive cascades. A vast volume of emerald green water descends with a roar like Niagara, throwing up a blinding cloud of spray. One of Ruskin's finest word paintings describes this celebrated waterfall.