The Benedictine Monastery. Melk.
where it forces its way between rugged heights, serrated with huge crags and castle ruins. There is no grander and no more romantic stretch of the river above Vienna than the few miles below Melk, for the summits are higher and bolder in outline and the rocks more wild and savage in character than in any other gorge. Ruins of old robber castles are perched upon every dizzy pinnacle, deep ravines with tumbling streams score the mountain-sides, and great walls of jagged rock rise above the dark foliage, often forming impassable barriers along the steep declivities. A whirling current carried us all too quickly through this enchantingly beautiful reach, and when at sunset we saw the great ruin of Dürrenstein lift its noble towers against the violet-colored sky, we chose a camp on the opposite bank and watched the last golden gleam of warm sunlight fade from its shattered battlements.
CHAPTER VII
HE harmonizing mists of early morning silvered the tawny surface of the Danube, and softened the jagged outlines of Dürrenstein, on the crowning pinnacle of the rocky spur which thrusts its shoulder boldly out from the wooded flanks of higher summits behind, and stands sentinel over the little village at its base, and the sunny hill-side vineyards and valley beyond. Our camp, in a little glade by a backwater nearly opposite the ruin, was so peaceful and quiet that something of the repose of the place crept over our restless spirits, and, for the first time since we began to coquet with the nervous currents of the whirling stream, we felt a keen desire to pause in our onward rush, an ambition to extend our horizon, to climb above the river-bank, to explore the gorges that fascinated us with their mysterious gloom, to linger yet a while in the great defile where every peak bears the ruins of a noble castle, and every hamlet has a history crowded with tales of minstrelsy and chivalry, and enriched by familiar legends and interesting traditions. Our eyes, keen to observe vigorous outlines of mountain forms, had discovered in this defile the most impressive landscapes the river had yet unfolded before us, and it was with a sense of proper dramatic climax that we found that Dürrenstein—the very name of which set free a flood of childish memories of Cœur de Lion, of Blondel, of ladies fair and chivalrous knights, of robbery and ransom—was the very outpost of the chain of ruins which had serrated the skyline through the whole defile, and looked down upon the gem of all the river reaches. I may as well confess that my idea of the geographical situation of the castle had hitherto been in the region of hazy uncertainty, if not actually in the humiliating penumbra of utter ignorance. Its position, then, had the added charms of surprise and novelty.