or,
“Two dogs to one bone;
I, Tuschl, stand alone.”
The canons of the place he thus founded bore the word “allain” on their arms, their clothes and their houses, and this, says Schultes, was latinized as “Solus cum sola.” Beyond Vilshofen and on to Passau is a lovely stretch of the river, with wooded hills on either side and occasional villages. The swift stream, here broken up by submerged rocks, “boils” and foams along in a manner that is seen again and again on the journey. At points where the disturbance is more particularly marked the hurrying waters receive some special name, until they reach the most remarkable manifestation of their brokenness at the world-famous Iron Gate. Below Vilshofen, near the village of Sandbach the troubled waters are known as “the terrible Sandbach”; but as we see boats passing these places—among them being ferry boats taken by girls across the swirling waters—the terror is more in seeming than in reality, when experience and care are employed in navigation. Indeed the temerarious Englishmen who took out the “Water Lily” said that they found nothing dreadful, nothing their shallow craft could not negotiate with ordinary care. As their chronicler wrote of this stretch of the river, which had been described to them as one of the bugbears of the Danube: “On we went alone, and found that it was just what we had expected, a most exceedingly dangerous place for a heavily laden boat, but by no means so for our little cockle-shell, that only drew a few inches of water; rocks were scattered about the bed of the river in every direction, some above water, and some below; the white breakers surrounded us on every side; we came rather unpleasantly near one, but with steady pulling, careful steering, and quick obedience to the word of command, we came safely through.”
Some way beyond “the terrible Sandbach” the road was cut more or less through the very rock right along the river-side, and here is to be seen another of the Danube memorials in the form of a couchant lion on a pedestal placed upon a jutting rock above an inscription which records that the road was made by order of Maximilian Joseph, the first king of Bavaria. From near Heining—where a branch of the railway is carried across the Danube, to the valley of the Ilz and the villages of the Wald—the towers of Mariahilf by Passau may be seen, and soon after the towers of Passau itself and the buildings on the high hills on the left bank to the north of the town.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] A similar story belongs to Kent, for it is said that the devil, wishing to destroy the city of Canterbury, took a great part of it up intending to drop it in the sea, but just as he reached the shore, he heard the ringing of the cathedral bell, and had to drop his load, and so instead of destroying the city of Canterbury, he started the town of Whitstable.
II
THE AUSTRIAN DANUBE
CHAPTER IV
PASSAU TO LINZ
“Romance and History, hand in hand