HE rocky shoulder of Greben is all scarred and torn by the cuttings which are gradually eating off its rugged and dangerous spur. Farther down-stream a breakwater is in course of construction, intended to divert the current from a shallow; and at some distance below, the great black masses of drilling machines, all chains and iron posts and funnels, are seen anchored in mid-stream, where they are constantly at work blasting out a great ledge of rock which causes the rapids of the Jur.
The cheery engineers, who had watched our descent of the rapids with great interest, welcomed us when we landed with offers of substantial hospitality, and over a good dinner we discussed the one topic which had for us a common interest—the moods and caprices of the great river. When we left them, at two o’clock, we had still a paddle of some twenty-five miles before we should reach Orsova, where we proposed to pass the night, not thinking it would be possible to camp in the gorge. There would be no shelter from the violent up-stream wind until we reached the entrance of the defile, so there was need of haste. Below Greben the river sweeps around in a great curve from the south to the north-east, a mile or more in width, then suddenly narrows, and takes a remarkably straight course through a deep cleft in the mountains, until it bends sharply towards the south again at the Iron Gates. The gorge through which it passes is called the Kasan defile, and is far and away the most impressive and wonderful feature of the scenery along the whole river. Sheer limestone precipices many hundred feet in height rise up in grand simple masses on either side, and as we approached the gorge it looked as if some great convulsion of nature had wrenched the solid rocks asunder, leaving the deep and narrow chasm for the passage of the river. Before Count Széchényi built his road along the Hungarian bank, in 1840, there had been no practicable pathway through the defile since the great road built by Trajan for his soldiers and his army trains during his Dacian campaign. At the entrance, where the river is constricted to a width of only 180 yards, the straight cutting of the modern highway and the great score in the cliffs left by Trajan’s road are both prominent features in the landscape. Here the river rushes violently past a high rock in mid-stream, which causes a dangerous whirlpool just below, then plunges into the narrow cleft with a volume of water 200 feet or more in depth, and swirls and boils and throbs with great pulsations all along its swelling flood. Narrower and narrower becomes the gorge, higher and higher the cliffs, and strange currents and ominous whirls break the surface of the dark torrent. In the depths of the chasm there is almost twilight gloom, and in the impressive quiet the murmur of the impatient river sounds dull and low, like the breakers on a far-off sea-shore. Still closer and closer crowd the giant cliffs, until they almost touch. At last they force the mighty river into the narrow compass of 120 yards; and then, as if fatigued with the effort of strangling the resistless flood, withdraw again, and little by little the current gains its familiar breadth, and spreads out into a pleasant reach with high wooded hills, enclosing on the north a fertile valley with ripening cornfields, and piling high on the south their rugged summits almost perpendicularly
THE KASAN DEFILE
over the water’s edge. Here the Roman road is almost practicable in parts, and under a great towering precipice, where a projecting rock pushes out boldly into the deep channel, the great general caused, in the year 103, a tablet to be carved in the solid rock, on which may still be read the inscription:
IMP·CAESAR·DIVI·NERVAE·F·
NERVA·TRAIANVS·AVG·GERM
PONTIF·MAXMVS·TRIB·OT * *
***** RIAE·CO *****