between us a large bowl of coarse, yellow-glazed pottery, gave us a wooden spoon apiece, and a thick wedge of black bread, which we broke, according to his commands, into the capacious vessel. When the soup was ready he poured it over the bread, filled the bowl to the brim, handed us each a bottle of beer, and bade us eat and drink until not a crumb or a drop remained. We were hungry, the soup was delicious, and the beer cool and refreshing, and we did not longer hesitate, but fell to at once. The only thing which interfered with our full enjoyment of the meal was the presence of a generous supply of beef in the soup, in chunks as large as our fists. Our maxillary muscles were not sufficiently well developed to enable us to masticate the phenomenally tough fibre of this meat, and we chose our opportunity when the broad back of the hospitable skipper was turned and slid it overboard. To our relief it went to the bottom like a sounding lead, and did not, as we feared, come bobbing up astern to bear witness to our insincerity. We gave our host a tiny American flag as a souvenir of our visit. He would take no money nor any of our stores, but was delighted with the Stars and Stripes, more especially as we had explained that the following day was Freiheit’s Tag, or Independence Day, in the great Republic of the West. We left him diligently digging a hole with his knife in the high stem-piece of the boat to plant the flag there.
Rowing clubs are numerous all along the river from Ulm to Vienna. Soon after leaving the flat-boat we landed at one near Deggendorf, a quiet old town with miraculous relics in the church, which attract many thousands of pious pilgrims annually. Later on in the day, as we were rounding a great bend in a solitary part of the river where we least expected to see anything afloat, we suddenly met a single-scull boat of the newest pattern shooting up the river like an arrow. A handsome athletic young fellow was pulling with all his might, evidently in training for a race. Our surprise was naturally mutual, for he no more expected to see a fleet of graceful, polished canoes than we did to see the Danube waters parted by the keen bow of a racing boat. He recovered from his astonishment first, and shouted heartily, “Hip! hip! Hip! hip!” We replied with the same salutation, for we had learned by this time that this call was not, as we had at first supposed, a playful imitation of the English cheer, but the common greeting in boating circles. We needed no further introduction, and could, indeed, have had no better one than our canoes, and we freely accepted the hospitalities of the Winzer Ruder Verein, whose tidy boat-house stands on the river-bank a mile or more from the village. The club has a membership of thirty-six, all of them sturdy young fellows of the neighborhood, with an enthusiastic love of water sports. A certain count, the local magnate, is the patron of the club, and contributes largely towards the training of the oarsmen, who compete with success in the regattas all over Germany. The jolly young fellows made so much of us, and received us so heartily into their brotherhood, that we had not the courage to explain that we were not real boating men at all, but only temporary members of the guild. Indeed, it is doubtful if they would have believed our statement, for we were quite as sunburned as they were, and our five days’ canoing had put us in first-rate physical condition. But on this, as on several other similar occasions, we had a lingering feeling of mental discomfort, because we could not help knowing that we were passing for what we were not, and never expected to be—sporting men.
CHAPTER VI
HE poplars of Passau came in sight early on the morning of the Fourth of July, but we had no intention of celebrating the day, particularly as one-third of our party took only a languid interest in the event. Neither did we care to meet any more boating men, however agreeable they might be, for, besides the consciousness of our false position, we had a realizing sense of the value of our time, and almost begrudged the hours spent at these boating entertainments. We avoided the rowing club at Passau, and stole in behind a floating bath-house and hid our canoes away there. This move did not save us, however, for as we were crossing the bridge, two rowing men who had seen us come down-stream were on hand to waylay us, and before we could enter a protest we were whisked off to luncheon. The town is attractively situated on a high promontory at the junction of the Inn and the Danube, and is, indeed, as far as natural environments go, one of the most beautiful spots of the whole river. The town itself, or at least as much of it as we were allowed by our friends to examine, is full of interest, although not distinguished by any remarkable monuments of art. The unruly Inn, which is always ready to overflow at a moment’s notice, comes rushing into the Danube with a dirty yellow, rubbish-strewn flood, and gives the larger river a sturdy shouldering for a long distance down-stream. It is the contamination of the Danube by the Inn that changes its color below Passau. Above this town it is in ordinary seasons of a greenish color, and sometimes, in the deep, shady pools, of an intense and beautiful blue; but the Danube as we saw it from Villingen, near the source, to Vilkoff at its mouth, was always of nearly the same monotonous, pale color of café au lait.
FROM STRAUBING TO DÜRRENSTEIN
From Ratisbon down we had met occasional freight steamers and tow-boats, and at Passau saw our first passenger steamers—comfortable little craft, which make the popular trip from this place to Linz, fifty-six miles below, in about four hours. The right bank of the Danube below the mouth of the Inn belongs to Austria, and the left bank, for fifteen miles or so, to Bavaria. The Austrian customs-station on the river is at a little hamlet called Engelhardszell, and just above this place the frontier line is marked by a peculiar isolated rock in mid-stream, surmounted by a shrine and crucifix and the rude figure of a saint. We were obliged to go ashore at Engelhardszell to pay river toll on our canoes, and, notwithstanding our strange appearance, each barefooted and sunburned, we met with the greatest civility and courtesy, and paid our sixteen kreutzers (eight cents) apiece without a murmur. Below the frontier the river narrows to half its width, and the speed of the current increases in proportion. The average fall per mile is also much greater in this part of the river than it is from Ulm to this point. From Ulm to Ratisbon the average fall per mile is 1.5 feet; from Ratisbon to Passau, 0.625; from Passau to Linz, 2.5, from Linz to Grein, 2.8, and from Grein to Vienna, 2.876. The flora has varied somewhat since the last reference was made to the botanist’s note-book, and the information on the subject is sure to be interesting:
“Below Weltenburg there are pinks and other rock flowers ... and at Kelheim, climbing to the Befreiungshalle, I found a herbaceous clematis with flowers like flammula, or erecta, and with glaucous leaves. The river-banks are mostly devoid of flowers, but on a shingly beach below Ratisbon, where we camped, I noticed a yellow sedum and a dwarf phlox, not in flower. Lower down, when getting near the hills, there were large patches of pink coronilla and a pale yellow mullen, also willow-herb and a white cruciferous plant.