I honour this sort of man. He fills a hard place well, and Bismarck or Mussurus cannot do more.
Then again, there is Ulric, the other waiter, hired only for to-day as an "extra," to meet the crush of hungry vocalists who will soon fill the saal. He is timid yet, being young, and only used to a village inn where "The Poste at Donaueschingen" is looked up to with solemn admiration as the pink of fashion. He was learning French too, and was sentimental, so I gave him a very matter-of-fact book, and then he asked me to let him sit in the canoe while I was to paddle it down the river to his home! The naïve simplicity of this request was truly refreshing, and if we had been sure of shallow water all the way, and yet not too shallow, it would perhaps have been amusing to admit such a passenger.
The actual source of the Danube is by no means agreed upon any more than the source of the Nile. I had a day's exploration of the country, after seeking exact information on this point from the townspeople in vain. The land round Donaueschingen is a spongy soil, with numerous rivulets and a few large streams. I went along one of these, the Brege, which rises twenty miles away, near St. Martin, and investigated about ten miles of another, the Brigach, a brook rising near St. Georgen, about a mile from the source of the Neckar, which river runs to the Rhine. These streams join near Donaueschingen, but in the town there bubbles up a clear spring of water in the gardens of the Prince near the church, and this, the infant Danube, runs into the other water already wide enough for a boat, but which then for the first time has the name of Donau.
The name, it is said, is never given to either of the two larger rivulets, because sometimes both have been known to fail in dry summers, while the bubbling spring has been perennial for ages.
The Brege and another confluent are caused to fill an artificial pond close by the Brigach. This lake is wooded round, and has a pretty island, and swans, and gold fish. A waterwheel (in vain covered for concealment) pumps up water to flow from an inverted horn amid a group of statuary in this romantic pond, and the stream flowing from it also joins the others, now the Danube.[VII.]
That there might be no mistake however in this matter about the various rivulets, I went up each stream until it would not float a canoe. Then from near the little bridge, on August 28, while the singers sol-faed excessively at the boat, and shouted "hocks" and farewells to the English "flagge," and the landlord bowed (his bill of thirteen francs for three full days being duly paid), and the populace stared, the Rob Roy shot off like an arrow on a river delightfully new.