OF WHICH TWELVE ARE IN COLOUR
METHUEN & CO. LTD.
36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
LONDON
First Published in 1911
PREFACE
The Rhine appears to have been one of the earliest of Continental “playgrounds” for British tourists—to have been such, indeed, long before Switzerland had been exploited. In the days of our grandfathers “everybody” went to the Rhine—it had become as it were the last relic of the grand tour which to earlier generations had been regarded as a necessary finishing off to every gentleman’s education. The past popularity of the Rhine is emphasized by the fact that the great river was utilized by both Thackeray and Hood as scenic background for literary purposes. What the Rhine was, the greater, the more beautiful, the grander and more fascinating Danube should become in these days of improved means of communication. Probably in the past its difficulty of access made the enthusiasm of travellers less effective in attracting English visitors to the Danube. As early as 1827, J. R. Planché, poet, dramatist, and historian of costume, made a Descent of the Danube from Ratisbon to Vienna, and duly published an account of the journey in the following year. Twenty years later another writer, who had “scribbled successfully for the stage,” John Palgrave Simpson, published Letters from the Danube, describing a journey by steamer from Ratisbon to Budapest. Then, in 1853, “two briefless barristers and a Cambridge undergraduate” journeyed in a Thames rowing-boat from Kelheim to Budapest, and one of their number, R. B. Mansfield, chronicled their adventures in The Water Lily on the Danube: being a brief account of a Pair-Oar during a voyage from Lambeth to Pesth. Some years earlier William Beattie had gathered various legends of the Danube to accompany Bartlett’s series of engravings of The Beauties of the Danube. Thus it will be seen that in days when the river was more distant than it is now it was not wanting panegyrists. In later years it has been curiously neglected, except in the way of casual references and the compact compilations of guide-books. This, however, may be said, so far as I have been able to ascertain, nobody who has journeyed along both the Rhine and the Danube—if we except the pardonable partiality of those who have a patriotic regard for the former—but finds the Danube almost incomparably the more variously fascinating stream.
From the time of the Romans onwards, from the time when our authentic chronicles begin, this mighty river has along its many hundreds of miles been the scene of so much history-making that to present the full story of the Danube would be to re-tell a large part of the history of the Continent during two thousand years. Such, it need scarcely be said, is not my aim or intention. To bring within the compass of a single volume some indication of the manifold beauties of the river, some hint of the romance that attaches to its castled crags, its villages, towns and cities, some suggestion of the great happenings of the past, some hint of the fascination of the present, is all that I can hope to do. And even so I am primarily concerned with presenting something of the story of the “scenic” Danube—that great stretch of the river which runs from near Ratisbon in Bavaria to the Iron Gate between Rumania and Servia, the stretch of which, from voyaging in steamers, from tramping along the river-side roads, and from journeying along it by railway, I have a personal knowledge. In applying the word “scenic” to this greater part of the great river, it is not intended to suggest that the upper waters above Kelheim and the lower waters below the Iron Gate have not also much to offer the traveller, but the portion indicated is that which comprises the most famously picturesque parts of the Danube. It includes the beautiful mountainous stretches above and below Passau in Bavaria and Austria, where the river runs at the foot of the southern slopes of the Böhmer Wald; it includes the wonderful Wachau of Lower Austria, and the finely varied extent of the Hungarian Danube, with the grand Kazan defile, where the river forms a natural barrier between Hungary and Servia. Along the greater part of the great extent which lies between the limits named, comfortable passenger steamers run all through the summer season, and in these steamers the traveller may continue through Rumania and Bulgaria down to the Black Sea, and all the colour and glamour of the Orient. In the upper parts of the river, before we can get afloat on it, the Danube is as it were but an incident in the scenery, but, when once we reach the parts navigable by passenger steamers, the scenery becomes the setting or framework for the mighty stream.
The fact that the Danube is known to empty itself into the Black Sea makes many people regard it as a river at so great a distance as not to come within the range of a practical holiday policy; and if we give the Black Sea its ancient name of the Euxine, we make it seem more distant still. Yet the fact is that much of the beauty of the Upper Danube may be explored by the holiday-maker who has but a fortnight or three weeks to spend, for the river has a length of nearly two thousand miles from where it rises in the duchy of Baden to where it joins the Black Sea, crossing or bordering in its course the States of Bavaria, Würtemburg, Austria, Hungary, Servia, Rumania and Bulgaria, and touching at the northernmost of its various mouths the vast territory of the Russian Empire. In parts the river is of course familiar to many people: those who go to Vienna, for example, see one of the least attractive bits it has to show; those who go to Budapest see it at its city best; while those who go to Ulm, Ratisbon, and other Bavarian towns know it in part. But I hope to show that it is by no means the best of the river that is seen by sojourners in any of the larger towns. It is to the visitor who likes to linger in out-of-the-way places that the Danube has most to offer, and in the hundreds of miles of beauties that it has to show there is little fear of places being overrun. That a goodly number of British visitors have “discovered” the river I learned from the captain of one of the steamers, who told me that “some seasons there are many English, but as a rule more Americans.” Yet the artist and I, on our journey down by boat, and on our river-side wanderings coming back, came across none of our compatriots, or of our transatlantic cousins, except in Vienna.
My thanks are due to numerous friends, known and unknown, who afforded me cordial assistance during a journey made yet more memorable by the many kindnesses shown to a travelling stranger. Special thanks, too, must be accorded to my friend Mr. James Baker, F.R.G.S., whose John Westacott might be described as a romance of the Danube, for it was he who first inspired me with the wish to journey down the great river, who brought home to me the fact, which this volume seeks to enforce, that the Danube is not only an easily accessible but a well-nigh inexhaustibly delightful holiday ground.
A word or two should, perhaps, be said as to the spelling of place names adopted. Generally speaking, I have sought to use the names, and the spellings, used in the countries to which the places belong. In bilingual Hungary most places have two names, Magyar and German, in which cases I give the national name, followed by its German equivalent in parentheses. Where there are recognized English names, such as Vienna and Ratisbon, I have used these, as it would in such cases be the merest pedantry to render them Wien and Regensburg.
WALTER JERROLD