The scenery, taken generally, is varied and beautiful; there are sometimes stern cliffs standing out at an angle, so that the current winds round to pass them, and sometimes they form a grand defile. Many are bare and rocky, others fir-clad, and constantly the grey ruins of an ancient castle may be seen perched on some boss, worn by age and weather to a likeness of the rock on which it stands, an unconscious manifestation that “protective” colouring is found elsewhere than in living species and an argument against the theory associated with it!
Every castle has its own tradition, readily repeated and religiously believed, like that of Schneiderschlossel, where a bishop and a goat and a tailor are mixed in equal proportions, making up a capital story.
The unfortunate tailor attempted to throw a dead goat over a precipice, but lost his balance and fell himself instead. His mangled body, smashed up by the razor-edged rocks, was washed down the stream. The country folk asserted that the goat was no animal at all but the fiend himself playing the part of a dead goat to tempt the tailor to his doom. To confirm this it appeared that several of them had seen the goat leaping up the precipices alive after the catastrophe. The bishop’s chaplain thereupon sprinkled holy water over the precipice. Now it happened that the tailor had been doing some work for the bishop, and after his death it was discovered that he had stolen at least a third of the glorious brocade which had been given him to make the robe. Now, of course, the judgment which had fallen on him was explained, for it was his impious theft which had given the evil one this power over him. The offerings of the pious to the bishop that year were doubled!
Englehardzell is the Austrian frontier house, for the real boundary of the countries, otherwise than in the Danube, is marked by a small stream a little below the Jochenstein.
Abrupt and steep, from either shore
The pine-clad precipices soar;
While oft, emerging from the wood,
In foam descends the mountain-flood.
At one point the river is contracted to half its usual width and accordingly rushes onward with greater velocity than before; the hills rise in varying heights from 600 to 1000 feet, and the turnings and windings of the river are so complicated that one moment the steamer heads north and some time later south, boxing the compass in her ordinary course.
After the castle of Neuhaus, the original home of the Counts of Schaumberg, the channel opens out and shows an entirely different character, with numerous wooded islets and a more peaceful style of beauty. We soon run past Mt. Calvary, the favourite pleasure-ground of the people of the clean, prosperous, modern-looking town of Linz, connected with an iron lattice bridge with the sister city of Urfahr. Linz, however, is not by any means really modern, whatever its looks, as its annals include the fact of its destruction by the Huns! It is the chief town of Upper Austria, and was made a centre of occupation by Napoleon in his octopus-like attempt to draw all Europe beneath his sway. The great features of the neighbourhood are the hill of Pöstlingberg, which can be reached by tram, and the massive castle overlooking the Danube. It is interesting now in connection with the observation cars put on to the Innsbruck-Salzburg-Linz-Vienna line as an experiment in 1912.