Behind is an extensive castle of the Schaumburgs, with a lofty tower, the chief seat of a powerful family at once dreaded and courted by neighbouring rulers. Tradition says that the river once ran by the walls of the castle, and also that it played a tragic part in the fate of one of the Counts, who, though invincible in battle or tournament, could not resist the charms of a fair maiden, “armed at both eyes,” the daughter of a miller in the valley of Aschach. One night as he was riding to a rendezvous with her, his horse started at the sudden appearance of a fiery dragon that rushed out of a thicket before him, and plunged with his master over a precipice into the swollen torrent below; the first objects that met the unfortunate maiden’s sight when she opened her casement in the morning, were the floating corses of her noble lover and his favourite steed. A stone pillar near a brook in the valley before the castle duly commemorated the tragic incident.
Below Aschach the river widens out and branches about around innumerable wooded islands and islets which cut off the view across the flat wide valley, though the mountains in the distance are still at times to be glimpsed. Just below the town where the Aschach Bach comes in behind a long island, are the ruins of Stauf, an old castle of the Counts of Staumberg—its picturesque white tower backed by the green hills. On a clear day, too, from this southward turn of the Danube may be had a glimpse of the far Styrian Alps. For some distance the journeyer along the Danube has the view cut off by the many islands formed by the branches of the river. A number of villages are passed on either side. To the south is Efferding where Kriemhilda rested on her journey from Passau, and where, in 1626, Count Pappenheim inflicted a crushing defeat on the insurrectionary peasants—of whom he is said to have slain 40,000 in putting down the revolt. “It was,” he declared, “as if my cavalry had to combat the massive rocks; for these peasants fought not like men, but like infernal furies!” The peasants, it should be said, fought for that freedom to exercise their Protestant religion which had been granted at Passau three-quarters of a century earlier. In this defeat at Efferding the leader of the peasants, a hatter named Stephen Fidinger, was slain; and subsequently his body was taken from the grave and gibbeted as a warning to those of his followers who still stubbornly resisted. Some distance inland on the left, on a rocky spur, is the castle of Freudenstein. But nothing much that is noteworthy is visible beyond the labyrinth of willow-grown islands through which the river finds its way.
Approaching hillier country as it nears Linz, the Danube trends again to the north-east, and Ottensheim is seen on the left with its handsome chateau rising from among a leafy mass of trees and forming a picturesque “bit.” The town was mostly destroyed by fire about a dozen years ago. A little further along on the right is Kloster Wilhering with an extensive and once widely powerful Cistercian Abbey founded in the twelfth century, but the present buildings were erected in the eighteenth. It is backed by the Kirnbergwald—the pines of which are seen for most of the rest of the journey to Linz. Here the river enters a beautiful valley with varied woodland-grown hills on either side, with the high Pöstlingberg crowned with its pilgrimage church showing ahead. Beyond Buchenau, with its compact church on the left, is seen on the right the Kalvarienberg, or Mount Calvary, the little chapels and crucifix of which together offer a place of pilgrimage for the citizens of Linz. With its falling waters, its craggy rocks and pine trees, it forms a pleasantly picturesque spot. From Ottensheim to Linz, it may be added, the railway keeps closely along the left bank. By wooded hills, the high Pöstlingberg on the left, and the lower yet steeply impressive height, close-grown with fir, on the right, the river reaches Linz on the right bank, having Urfahr on the opposite side, with which it is connected by an ugly lattice iron bridge, over nine hundred feet in length.
Linz, the capital of Upper Austria, is a clean, prosperous-looking town, the straight lines of its buildings contrasting strongly with the delightful irregularity of Passau; and its air of modernity gives no suggestion that as Lentia it was one of the Roman stations on the Danube. Possibly when the Huns destroyed it they did so with thoroughness. At the western end of the broad valley through which the river continues for many miles, and backed by the hills, Linz is picturesquely situated, though it is necessary to climb the hills to appreciate this properly. There are a number of churches, a handsome museum, and other fine buildings, but the town itself does not claim long attention, except as an admirable centre for beautiful excursions on both sides of the river. The fine Franz Joseph Platz is seen at its best when, crowded with the stalls and carts of market time, it presents a lively and picturesque scene. The Trinity Column in the centre of it was erected early in the eighteenth century to commemorate the deliverance of the town from two scourges—the Turks and the plague. Pestilence in the olden times seems, indeed, to have been so constant a menace to many of these towns that it is matter for wonder that people were left to take part in the no less constant warfare.
Looking up-stream from the bridge, we have a view reminiscent of the Highlands of Scotland, the rocky hill rising from the water, dark with its close-grown trees is surmounted by the Franz Joseph Watch-tower, an observation point from which grand views are to be had both up and down the river. There are other fine views from different parts of this hill, if the watch tower is approached from the town by way of the Freinberg, but the most delightful way of reaching the tower is by following the Danube-side road and taking the steep path up through the woodland, or from the Kalvarienberg. The view-point of the neighbourhood, however, is the summit of the Pöstlingberg on the north side of the river, which may be reached by tramway from Linz, and thence by the mountain railway which ascends the berg from Urfahr. For the lover of fine prospects—and we do not know a tract of country properly unless we can now and again get some approximation to a bird’s-eye view—the outlook from the Pöstlingberg is one of the grandest along the Danube—
“Afar the Salzburg and the Styrian Alps
In forms gigantic rear their frozen scalps:
And there the rugged Trauntstein loves to throw
His mingling shadows o’er the lake below.
While mountain, river, forest, field proclaim