The problem—if problem it can be called—is an old one, for a traveller more than half a century ago amusingly prefaced his account of a voyage down this part of the river in the following fashion. He describes how, having embarked at Orsova, he “proceeded to encounter the perils of the Eisern Thor—the Iron Gate of the Danube—which is so apt to be associated in the stranger’s imagination with something of real personal risk and adventure. The ‘Iron Gate,’ we conjecture, is some narrow, dark, and gloomy defile, through which the water, hemmed in by stupendous cliffs, and ‘iron-bound,’ as we say, foams and billows, and dashes over a channel of rocks, every one of which, when it cannot drag you into its own whirlpool, is sure to drive you upon some of its neighbours, which, with another rude shove, that makes your bark stagger and reel, sends you smack upon a third! ‘But the “gate”?’ ‘Why the gate is nothing more or less than other gates, the “outlet”; and I dare say we shall be very glad when we are “let out quietly.”’ ‘Very narrow at that point, ’spose?’ ‘Very. You have seen an iron gate?’ ‘To be sure I have.’ ‘Well, I’m glad of that because you can more readily imagine what the “Iron Gate” of the Danube is.’ ‘Yes—and I’m all impatience to see it; but what if it should be locked when we arrive?’ ‘Why, in that case we should feel a little awkward.’ ‘Should we have to wait long?’ ‘Only till we got the key, although we might have to send to Constantinople for it.’ ‘Constantinople! well, here’s a pretty situation! I wish I had gone by the “cart.”’ ‘You, certainly had your choice, and might have done so—the company provide both waggon and water conveyance to Gladova; but I daresay we shall find the gate open.’ ‘I hope we shall; and as for the rocks and all that, why we got over the Wirbel and Strudel and Izlas and twenty others, and ’spose we get over this, too. It’s only the Gate that puzzles me—the Handbook says not a word about that—quite unpardonable such an omission! Write to the publisher——’!”
This is of course, a somewhat exaggerated account, but the name of the Iron Gate is likely long to cause confusion in the minds of “visualizing” persons—those who cannot learn the name of an object without forming a picture of the thing named. Such folk, as long as the Iron Gate remains the Iron Gate, will be likely to think of it as a gloomy defile rather than as a fairly wide portion of the river—will associate the name with the confining banks rather than with the rocks in the bed of the river—rocks which during high water are entirely hidden from sight. The great engineering work which has been carried out in regulating the navigation of the Danube, has modified the terror of the Iron Gate so that the long ridges of serrated rock are less of a menace than of old.
Some of this regulating work we saw in the neighbourhood of the Greben. The completion of it—and in some ways the most remarkable portion—is here at the Iron Gate, where along the right bank a “canal” was blasted through the solid rock, to ensure a sufficient channel of water for boats at all times. Before this regularizing, the Iron Gate portion of the river was unusable for about three months of each year. The canal was devised to allow of a minimum depth of nearly ten feet below Orsova, as the upper regularizing work was done to make a minimum depth of six and a half above Orsova. This is not the place, nor am I the writer, to deal with the great engineering feats by which the work was accomplished.
The navigation of the Iron Gate was opened for traffic on 27 September, 1896, in the presence of the rulers of the three kingdoms that meet in its neighbourhood, the Emperor Francis Joseph as king of Hungary, King Carol of Rumania, and King Alexander of Servia, and though the channel was made, as it was hoped, of sufficient width to allow vessels to pass in it, the strength of the current is such that such passing was found to be impracticable, and vessels, when there is sufficient water, come up-stream outside the canal. During my stay in the neighbourhood there was sufficient water, and nothing was seen of the rocks which, for a distance of nearly a mile and a half, form the Iron Gate. Nothing was seen of the rocks, but much was seen of their action. For the distance mentioned, the surface of the water from the left bank to the outer wall of the canal was one foaming and seething mass, formed by the current rushing against the submerged lines of jagged stone. The effect of passing through this in the little steam launch of the chief engineer in control of the navigation works, is very wonderful. It seems as though the tiny craft would inevitably be battered by the tumultuous waters against some of the invisible rocks; but the steersmen seem to know the waters with unfailing sureness, and it stems the broken current in safety. From the low deck of the launch those “boiling” waters seemed much more formidable than from that of the ordinary passenger steamer, though this, too, having gone on the downward journey through the canal, came back over the cataract portion. When the rocky ridges are exposed at low water, the scene has been described as “the gaping jaws as it were of some infernal monster.”
Interesting, even fascinating, in the broad mass of its broken waters, the Iron Gate, despite its traditional importance, is far less grandly impressive than is the Kazán.
THE IRON GATE
The Iron Gate begins immediately below the island of Ada Kaleh—a signal station with a rising and falling globe indicates whether the course through is clear—and as we pass down the canal we get but an imperfect impression of the long-formidable barrier, the dangers of which it has lessened. On either side of us rise sloping tree-grown hills, giving way, as we reach the further end, to curious high sandhills on the left or Rumanian side. Borne swiftly along in the steamer, we get but a general effect of the scenery, and may well regret that we have no opportunity of exploring the shores, the wooded hills and inviting valleys. In the past, when even the steamers coming up-stream were aided by bands of sturdy peasants towing, travellers were sometimes given opportunities of “stretching their legs” by walking. Miss Skene, who journeyed up the river in early summer in these old circumstances and wrote descriptive letters of her experiences, may describe for us from the land what we see but vaguely from the water: