After a very delightful week in Vienna, which seemed indeed far too short a time to bestow upon the most enjoyable capital in Europe, I took my passage in a steamer to Pesth, starting at six a.m., and arriving at my destination at about the same hour in the evening. The steamer was a very fine one, the accommodation excellent, the cuisine not good, but then I had been terribly spoilt at the Erz-Herzog Karl; probably had I been at a worse hotel, I would not have found so much fault with the cookery on board the steamer. The company on board was worse than the cookery—in all my rambles I don't think I ever met so unprepossessing a lot.
The large steamers that navigate the Danube don't come up to Vienna, but lie off the Island of Lobau, to which passengers are carried in a smaller steamer. The morning I started was drizzling and chilly in the extreme, in marked contrast with the weather of the previous week, which had been intensely hot; and when I sat down on the deck of the little steamer which was to take me down a branch of the Danube to the main steamer, I was glad to avail myself of my top-coat and rugs. In a short time we reached the larger vessel, and, having all got on board, we started at a good round speed.
From Vienna to Gran, the Danube is uninteresting so far as scenery is concerned. Its enormous volume of muddy water, wider than the Thames at Westminster, though still upwards of nine hundred miles from its entrance into the Black Sea, flows through a vast flat country; an interminable front of sallows and alders on the one side, and an interminable plain on the other, dotted all over with countless herds of white cattle with long black horns like the Tuscan oxen, and endless troops of horses; and as I gazed on the mighty flood of turbid waters, the old Italian nursery rhyme came back to my memory.
"Tre Ombroni fanno un Arno,
Tre Arni fanno un Tevere,
Tre Tevere fanno un Pò,
E tre Pò di Lombardia
Fanno un Danubio di Turchia."
We passed by Pressburg where the two sides of the river are united by a bridge of boats. We only remained a short time and I had no opportunity of going ashore, so that I could form but a very inaccurate opinion of the place; it seemed to me from its outward look as not now prosperous, but had quite the appearance of having seen better days.
After a time we came to Komorn, the celebrated fortress; if I had not been told, "There is Komorn," I might almost have passed it without observing it, so protected from sight are its bastions by the immense earthworks in front of them. Still down we steamed, and still the same country right and left met our view, till we came to Gran, the seat of the Prince-Primate of Hungary, perhaps one of the wealthiest prelates in the world, possessing no less an income than £90,000 per annum.