“... Kazán’s stupendous rocks,
Where eagles eyry in the heights above
And the dark Danube pours it flood below.”
From the Magyar
From Belgrade, the Danube, though with many bold windings that now and again give us the impression that the river is turning sharp corners, follows a general easterly course until it passes beyond the Hungarian frontier. Here we are journeying between two Roman provinces, that of Mœsia on the right which is now Servia, and that of Dacia, the only province established by Rome beyond the Danube which is now part of Hungary. Here, too, it may be mentioned the river was known to the Greeks as the Ister, the main stream being regarded as that of the Save, which rises near the confines of Istria.
Leaving Belgrade, we pass between the citadel-topped hill and the tree-grown War Island. When we reach the broad main stream again, the left or Hungarian bank, broken into islands, continues flat and thickly wooden with low greenery. On the Servian side are bare rounded hills which, as we near them, are seen to be dotted with red-roofed white houses and patches of crops. A tandem team of oxen may be observed ploughing a steep and stony hillside that appears too precipitous for cultivation. Through a break in the hills we get a glimpse of the higher mountains of the Balkans.
Leaving the Servian capital early in the morning, the autumn sunrise as we pass between these greatly contrasting banks is peculiarly beautiful. White mist, irradiated by the golden light, affords constant change of view as the steamer passes through varying banks of it. The mist appears, indeed, to rise and fall, as now we go through a thick veil, and now have one or the other and again both shores clearly visible. As the sun rises higher and the mist disperses, wisps of it appear to rise columning up from the surface of the water.
An hour or so below Belgrade, where the river has attained a width of about a mile and a quarter, we reach on the left, opposite a large island, the mouth of the Temes, one of the Alföld rivers, which flows down from Temesvár. Here is the landing place for Pancsova, a considerable lowland town, which stands about three miles up the Temes. On the Servian side nearly opposite, is Vischnitz, and some distance below we pass Krotzka, the scene of a disastrous battle between the Austrians and the Turks in 1739. Austria had joined with Russia in her war against Turkey, and the Austrian army, advancing from Belgrade, here encountered the enemy, and were defeated with such great loss that they were compelled to sue for a peace, by which they had to restore to the dominion of the Sultan, Belgrade, Orsova, and other territories which they had acquired by an earlier treaty.
The first stopping place of the steamer on the Servian shore is Semendria, a town of old-time importance which is indicated by the extensive ruined fortress right on the river bank. This fortress—some idea of the size of which may be gathered from the fact that it has eleven massive castellated towers along the town-side wall—is sometimes described as Turkish, but is said to have been originally established in the first half of the fifteenth century by the Servian prince, Georg Branković on the site of an earlier Roman stronghold. The many Servian, Turkish and other costumes noticeable among the crowd under the trees on the bank above the landing place, give a touch of Oriental colour to the scene.