THE DANUBE
FROM THE BLACK FOREST
TO THE BLACK SEA

BY
F. D. M I L L E T
AUTHOR OF “A CAPILLARY CRIME” ETC.
ILLUSTRATED BY
THE AUTHOR AND ALFRED PARSONS

NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE

Copyright, 1892, by Harper & Brothers.
—
All rights reserved.

“Wenn ich dann zu Nacht alleine
Dichtend in die Wellen schau’,
Steigt beim blanken Mondenscheine
Auf die schmucke Wasserfrau
Aus der Donau
Aus der schönen, blauen Donau.”
—Beck.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

THE DANUBE
FROM THE BLACK FOREST TO THE BLACK SEA

CHAPTER I

T the head of a pleasant little valley high up among the bristling mountain-tops of the Black Forest, a tiny stream of clear water comes tumbling down the rocks, and, gathering strength and volume from an occasional spring or a rivulet, cuts a deep channel into the rich soil of the hayfields, and dances along gayly over its bed of glistening pebbles. To the north, west, and south the bold summits of the water-shed, heavily clothed in dark masses of coniferous trees, make a rugged, strongly accentuated sky line, and to the east delightful vistas of sunny slopes and fertile intervales stretch away in enchanting perspective to the hazy distance. This little stream, the Brigach, with its twin sister, the Brege, which rises about ten miles farther to the south, are the highest sources of the mighty River Danube, the great water highway of Europe since earliest history, celebrated for ages in legend and song, gathering on its banks in its course of nearly two thousand miles to the Black Sea the most varied and interesting nationalities in the civilized world, and unfolding in its flow the most remarkable succession of panoramas of natural beauty known to the geographer. The Black Forest Railway, which crosses the mountains from the valley of the Rhine into the upper valley of the Danube by the way of Triberg, mounts the western escarpment of the range by a series of steep grades, curves, and short tunnels, in the midst of beautiful scenery of a semi-Alpine character, and, after the divide is reached, follows the course of the Brigach to Donaueschingen, a tidy little town in the Grand Duchy of Baden, usually called the source of the Danube, and, for the greater part of the year, the head of navigation for small boats on the upper river. A mile and a half below Donaueschingen the Brigach and the Brege join, and the stream here receives the name of the Danube.

PEASANT GIRL OF THE BLACK FOREST

Our party of three was made up of ideal elements. The accuracy of this statement must be permitted for a moment to eclipse the habitual modesty of that member of the expedition whose duty it has become to tell the story of the trip. The originator of the enterprise was an expert canoist who had steered his frail craft through breakers of various seas and over shoals of countless rivers. On him was to devolve the literary part of the expedition—an arrangement which would have been carried out but for the ruthless interference of that all-powerful tyrant, Time. The other two members of the alliance expected to take elaborate notes of all attractive features of the landscape and all interesting types of humanity, the one meanwhile joyfully anticipating the pursuit of his favorite study of botany, and the other

A HAYMAKER

indulging in the exhilarating prospect of explorations in the fascinating field of philology, and looking forward with no little interest to revisiting under the pleasantest of auspices old friends and familiar scenes. We agreed to meet at Donaueschingen on June 22d, and made all our arrangements to have the canoes reach that point on or previous to that date. The experience of old travellers with canoes was all against the successful consummation of this plan, particularly as two of the boats had to be shipped from New York, and would not be finished until the 3d of the month. The fate of the other canoe was more or less certain, for the owner decided to watch it himself all the way from London to the place of meeting, having learned after many disappointments that this process of transportation, although irksome, was the only one he could depend upon. On the evening of Saturday, June 20th, two of us left London in the wake of the Admiral of the fleet, who had paddled his canoe down the Thames to the Flushing boat some days before. Thirty-six hours later, on the morning of the 22d, refreshed and cheered by the brisk air of the mountains after two feverish nights on the journey, we saw between the showers of rain the brilliant sunlight sparkling on a tiny mountain brook near the little hamlet of Sommerau, on the eastern slope of the water-shed. Although we had no map or guide-book, we knew at once that our acquaintance with the Danube had begun. The long-dormant sporting corpuscles in our blood took on a sudden and stimulating activity, and we were in a nervous quiver to begin our long-dreamed-of cruise. The Rhine had failed to charm us with its majestic scenery; we had seen only the hideous scars that modern man has made on the fair face of nature there, with villas of carpenter’s Gothic and summer hotels of repulsively mammoth proportions. Cologne, Mayence, Strasburg, which, under ordinary circumstances, would have been joys to us, had been on this journey aggravating impediments in the way of our progress, for all the trains had seemed to combine viciously to break connections at these points and to force us to delay our eager flight. The charms of architecture and art, although always potent, had been but a meagre consolation to us in our impatience to begin our intimate communion with Nature. Even the wonderful railway journey over the pass, while it had put us in a better mood and temporarily stirred our emotions, had not given us a tithe of the sensation that the sparkle of the rivulet caused as we caught sight of it after a great gray curtain of rain had been driven away by an all-powerful flood of sunlight.

The quaintest and strangest of costumes met our eyes as we leaned out of the window of our compartment when the train stopped at the station of St. Georgen, eager to see how the brook had widened there. The hurrying peasant women, in queer skull-caps with immense ribbon bows, stiff bodices, and short petticoats, seemed to be the supernumeraries in the prologue of an exciting, drama now about to begin. The train rolled slowly on with that peculiar settling-down motion that denotes a descending grade, and we watched the yard-wide brook gradually expand its channel and assume the proportions of a goodly stream. In the fertile valley near Villingen, where the country opens out

DONAUESCHINGEN GIRLS

and the landscape becomes more extensive, the stream was now fully a half-dozen yards wide, and the recent heavy rains had filled it nearly to overflowing with a yellow flood. We had a sudden and strong temptation to stop and begin our cruise at this point, but the uncertainty of the fate of our canoes, of which we had received no item of information since they had been shipped at New York, made it imperative for us to push on to Donaueschingen, and our ambition to make the highest start on record in the Danube annals was forever crushed by the considerations of transportation. Donaueschingen was still dripping from a heavy shower when we arrived about noon-time, but the eloquently beaming face of our companion would have dispelled the gloom of the heaviest thunder-storm, and we heeded not the weather, for we understood at once that the canoes had arrived and were all right. Indeed, contrary to all precedent and all prophecy, they had turned up safe and sound the day before; and when we saw them for the first time, all sleek and shiny and dainty, resting on the flag-stones of the inn-yard as lightly as bubbles on a pool of water, we felt that kind and quality of elation that had been a stranger to us since the first happy day of school vacation. Graceful as violins, with sails whiter than the fresh whitewash of the tidy hostlery, with shining nickel fittings and every detail highly finished, they combined in their construction beauty and strength in a near approach to perfection.

Under the very wall of the inn-yard the Brigach, now quite a river and much swollen by the floods, rushed and foamed and filled the air with an inviting murmur. Donaueschingen has long been the starting-point for boating expeditions to Vienna, but, as we rightly conjectured, no craft similar to the American cruising canoe had ever before been seen there. Curiosity to examine the novelties, coupled with the knowledge of our plan to cruise as far as the Black Sea, which had been widely disseminated by our advance agent in his brief stay, made a ripple of excitement all over the town, and the inn-yard was constantly crowded with visitors, many of them skilled mechanics, for the neighborhood is widely famous for its clocks and wood-carvings. Only one of us, as I have already confessed, was acquainted with a canoe of this kind, but we were all experienced in the management of birch-barks and Canadians and other small craft. We effectually concealed our ignorance from the spectators, however, and in the guise of testing the apparatus after its long journey, worked the sails, rudder, and centre-board, set up the tents, shipped and unshipped the hatches, until we became quite familiar with the working of them all. It may be as well at the beginning to show the result of our examination of the canoes and to describe them briefly, for the reason that our adventures will be better appreciated and our river life better understood if some adequate notion can be given of the craft that carried us by day and housed us for the night for three happy months.

THE SKETCH-BOOK

The three canoes were as nearly alike in dimensions, lines, weight, and fittings as the skill of an old and famous builder on the banks of the East River, New York, could make them. They measured 15 feet in length, 30 inches in width, and about 18 inches in extreme depth. A deck of thin mahogany covered the whole with the exception of an oval opening about 6 feet long and 20 inches wide, which was surrounded by an oak coaming about 2 inches high. A series of hatches was fitted to this coaming, and these could be adjusted in various ways, so that the canoe could be converted in a moment from an open boat into a modified Rob Roy, or entirely covered up and locked as securely as a jewel-box. Like all similar craft, a good strong oaken keel made the backbone, and a great many small ribs of riven heart-of-oak were copper-riveted to this keel, forming, with the stem—and stern-post and a few cross-timbers, a light, strong, and not too rigid skeleton. The sheer-strake was of mahogany, and the others of selected white cedar. All the fastenings were of the best copper, and the trimmings and fittings of nickel-plated brass. One peculiarity of the construction was that the deck-boards and all the strakes ran from stem to stern without a splice. The weight of each canoe, empty, was about eighty pounds, but with the nickel-plated drop rudder, heavy brass folding centre-board, two sails with masts and spars, paddles and general outfit, the whole weight in cruising trim must have been fully 200 pounds, but we never verified this estimate, judging only by the fact that at no time during the trip were they too heavy to be lifted easily by two of us.

We were naturally quite as much interested in the practical working of the canoes as in their appearance, for we knew that the brilliant varnish would soon grow dim, the smooth surface of the mahogany become dented and scratched, and that the lines and proportions would alone

BLACK FOREST COW TEAM

remain to testify to the original perfection of the build. The two sails, a large leg-of-mutton main-sail and a mizzen of similar shape but much smaller, could be raised, lowered, reefed, and furled from the canoist’s seat on the floor of the cockpit. The mizzen-mast could be unshipped, the rudder raised out of the water or lowered below the keel; the centre-board, which shut up like a fan into a long slot in the keel, could be adjusted to any desirable depth; the hatches could be shipped and unshipped, the canoe baled out, and all other necessary operations of navigation performed with the greatest ease and rapidity. A double-blade paddle 8 feet long, and jointed so that the blades could be turned at right angles to each other, was to be depended upon for the ordinary means of propulsion, but we anticipated using the sails as often as wind, weather, and the run of the river would permit. When paddling or sailing, the after-hatch of the cockpit was to be left on, and a movable bulkhead, upon which the forward part of the hatch rested, was intended to serve as a back-rest for the occupant, who also might sit upon the hatch and thus change his position at discretion. The length between the bulkheads was 8 feet, and on the cedar floor-boards of this space we proposed to make our bed for the night, trigging the canoe up on the shore for the purpose, and thus providing for ourselves a dry, sheltered, and comfortable bed under all circumstances. A box-tent of good duck was made to be slung between the masts and to button securely along the gunwales. This was provided with flaps for ventilation and entrance, and with mosquito-proof curtains. The water-tight compartments fore and aft made excellent spaces for dry storage, and during the day all articles for handy use were to be kept behind the back-rest where they could be easily got at. The spare paddle, unjointed for the sake of packing, the sketching apparatus, maps and note-books, and the foot-steering gear and the fore-hatches, were to be the only encumbrances of the cockpit proper. When we came to experiment with our outfit we found that we had plenty of room and to spare, and subsequent experience proved to us the accuracy of our first plans for the stowage and arrangement of all our traps.

We naturally depended largely on the advice of the veteran cruiser of the party for the selection of our outfit, and we two novices had a consultation with him shortly after our expedition was decided upon. Knowing nothing about the canoes, we asked him what we should take along to make a bed with; whether we should carry an air-pillow or one of the small cork mattresses we had seen advertised for such trips.

“Dear me, no!” he said. “You don’t need any blanket. Sleep in your clothes!”

“But a pillow?” we urged.

“Just fold up your trousers for a pillow!”

“Then what do you cover yourself up with?”

“That’s simple enough. Pop your legs in the sleeves of your coat and your feet and ankles will be as warm as toast.”

“What about your shoulders?”

“Oh, well; haul any old thing over your shoulders. You’ll soon get used to that. The less you carry the better.”

This unique method of making one’s self comfortable for the night appealed more to our sense of humor than it did to the practical side of our nature, and we decided to carry a good thick woollen blanket, a rubber one of extra quality, a canvas boat-bag with a suit of shore-going clothes, a sleeping-suit, various spare flannels, socks, boating-shoes, and other small articles. This bag would make, if packed with that end in view, an excellent pillow; and we proposed to trust to our constitutional endurance to become indifferent to the hardness of the canoe floor. A bicycle cape, a sketching umbrella and camp-stool, together with a sketch-bag full of materials, practically completed the personal outfit of the majority of the party. Of all these articles we found the rubber ones alone to be of no real use. The bicycle cape shed water for a few minutes and then converted itself into a complicated system of gargoyles which conducted the drip into the most intimate recesses of our clothing, and soon made the canoe floor a perfect swamp. As for the expensive rubber blankets, they were a fetich for many weeks. The hours and hours we waited for those dew-dripping sheets to dry! The care we took of them lest they should get burned or torn, and prove worthless in the hour of need! The trouble we took to pack them by day and to cover them up at night lest they should gather all the moisture of the neighborhood and communicate it to our clothing! We never but once used them to shed the rain, and that was the third night of our expedition, but we conscientiously lugged them along with us the whole distance, and got only our bother for our pains. The sketching umbrellas and the camp-stools were, on the other hand, of the greatest use and a constant comfort. When it rained we sat at our ease on the stools and comfortably cooked and ate and smoked under the spreading expanse of white linen. When a shower overtook us on the water we often hoisted the umbrellas and drifted along as sheltered and as dry as could be.

SPECTATORS

Our batterie de cuisine consisted of three spirit-lamps of different sizes and styles, a few plates and cups of white enamelled ironware, a tin kettle, coffee-pot, teapot, and water-can, knives, forks, spoons, and ladle. These necessary articles, together with the hatchet, a few tools and copper nails, medicines and general stores, we soon learned to distribute properly among the three canoes, and thus divide the weight and amicably share the trouble of transportation. It was astonishing how much the canoes would hold, and every time we unpacked them we always marvelled at their loading capacity. In addition to the outfit described we often had to carry fresh meat, vegetables, milk and wine, and a large store of burning spirits, to say nothing of a great many canned provisions. The limit seemed to be fixed only by the weight we were individually willing to struggle with.

Our experiments with the canoes in the inn-yard and the rearrangement of our luggage occupied us most of the whole afternoon of the long summer day, but we had daylight enough left in which to see the town and stroll through the extensive park with its lakes and its sociable swans, and to gaze from afar on the inhospitable looking palace of the Princes of Fürstenberg, who have arbitrarily declared for their own glorification that a large spring in their pleasure-grounds is the actual source of the Danube. They have surrounded the spring with expensive masonry, and erected a stone tablet with an inscription giving the information, among other things, that that spot is 678 metres above sea level and 2840 kilometres from the Black Sea by way of the Danube. The hotel where we stayed is at the southern end of the fine stone bridge connecting the two sections into which the Brigach divides the town. Conveniently near to the hotel is a large flight of stone steps leading down to the water, and here we proposed to launch the canoes early the next morning and make our start, a few yards above the source of the Danube, according to the prince’s tablet, and about 2000 yards above the junction of the Brigach and the Brege, where the stream is first christened the Danube.

CHAPTER II

HE final preparations for our cruise occupied more time than we anticipated, and it was quite eight o’clock before the canoes touched water at the foot of the slippery stone steps. A large proportion of the inhabitants of Donaueschingen gathered on the bridge and near the landing to see us off, and a dozen eager volunteers helped us carry our boats and launch them into the yellow stream. A few minutes sufficed to stow the traps, for we had sent the sails and tents and various other articles by rail to Ulm, thinking they would be more trouble than use on the upper part of the river, with its succession of dams and weirs. Then, amid the “Hochs!” and “Glückliche Reises!” of the multitude, we scrambled in, each in turn, and pushed off. We firmly believe that no one in the great crowd of spectators detected that two of us were handling a double-bladed paddle for the first time—not even the two ladies from Massachusetts whom we met at the inn, for their hearty interest in our trip, and their enthusiastic admiration for the canoes, doubtless blinded them to the observance of our awkwardness. The swelling, curling stream bore us merrily out of sight of the town, and only an occasional paddle stroke was necessary to keep the bow in the right direction. Boys and girls ran along the shady path trying to keep pace with us, and we saw on the highway a carriage with our lady friends, who loyally kept sight of us for several miles. A very short time sufficed to familiarize us with the management of the canoes, so we could thoroughly enjoy the beauty of the landscape and indulge in the unalloyed feeling of satisfaction at our successful start, and we swept on through the great alternating patches of sunlight and shadow, under trailing boughs of large trees and past beds of tall rushes. In a few moments the Brege came in with a volume of water about equal to the Brigach, and then the real Danube rushed on, already quite majestic in aspect, through fields kaleidoscopic with myriads of flowers, reflecting in its pools the clear blue of the sky with brilliant summer clouds, adding new charms to the landscape at every turn. A number of swans from the park at Donaueschingen swam just ahead of us nearly to the first village, Pforen, with its dominating church edifice and huge wooden bridge. When they reached this self-imposed limit of their excursion they rose into the air with great flutterings and splashings, wheeled around and passed us so near at hand that we could feel the air from their great wings, then sailed away in graceful flight to their home in the secluded islands of the park. Large white wing-feathers danced along down stream; and when, many weeks afterwards, we dismantled our canoes on the shores of the Black Sea, we found one of these carefully stowed away in an angle of the underpart of the deck, and, with mock ceremony of a message from the Swan of the Source to the Sturgeon of the Sea, threw it to the strong north wind.

The meadows were full of haymakers—men, women, and children—laughing and chattering and bidding us “Grüss Gott!” as we passed. The odors of the fresh hay and the perfumes of the flowers were almost intoxicating in their strength. Nature on every side of us had that peculiar freshness and depth of color which comes with the first clear weather at the end of a long-continued rain, and the

THE START—DONAUESCHINGEN

landscape, seen from the level of the water, had the increased beauty of line and composition which so often comes from this point of view in the perspective. In less than an hour we reached our first weir near the little village of Neidingen, but the banks were easily accessible owing to the height of the stream, and in five minutes we had dragged the canoes across a grassy point and had launched them again. From the accounts we had read of these obstructions to navigation of the upper river, we anticipated much greater difficulties than we encountered at any of the one-and-twenty weirs and dams we navigated between Donaueschingen and Ulm, although the first one of all was by far the easiest to pass, and should not be mentioned as a fair sample. The weirs are far more numerous than the dams; indeed, there are but two or three of the latter. These, of course, must be carried over because of the sheer descent of the construction, whereas the weirs usually consist of a long slope of masonry over which the canoes can be shot without difficulty at the end of a long painter.

The delight of our first luncheon in the open air will never lose its freshness in the memory of either of us three. After a struggle with a weir at Geisingen, we landed in a pleasant meadow just below the village among waist-high ranks of wonderfully brilliant flowers, and lay for an hour basking in the balmy, perfume-laden, sunny air. At our feet the Danube, not the “beautiful blue” of song, but a vigorous, rushing stream, danced and sparkled in the sunlight. Before us were heavily-wooded hills with cool and tempting shadows, behind us the cluster of half-timbered houses and dignified church-tower of the village, and everywhere around the glories of a perfect June day. A few children, attracted by the sight of the canoes, interrupted our siesta; but when the school-bell sounded they all scampered away, and their prompt obedience to the call of authority made our independence seem all the more real and desirable. Then and there at our first landing-place we formed ourselves into a Society for the Preservation of the Banks of the Danube, appointed a president, secretary, and treasurer, and a board of management, and unanimously adopted one regulation, which was to the effect that we should not disfigure in any way the spots we might occupy as camps, but that all rubbish and unsightly debrís should be carefully hidden or thrown into the stream. To the honor of the S. P. B. D. let it be chronicled here that the regulation was strictly observed to the very end of the cruise.

PFOREN

Below Neidingen and past Geisingen, Immendingen, and Möhringen the river winds through broad, fertile meadows, and in summer it is a panorama of wild-flowers. In the quiet pools of the stream we startled many water-fowl, and once caught sight of a deer feeding near the water. Numerous huts along the bank showed us that this was a favorite shooting-ground in the season, and there were many indications that the game is carefully preserved. The whole of that perfect first day was one uninterrupted succession of surprises and delights, both in landscape and architecture. The frequent villages were all of them interesting and picturesque both in construction and in situation, and as the houses lost their alpine character and became more solid and settled in type, they formed fascinating groups, and made a charming feature of every view.

In the late afternoon we floated out of the sweet air of the meadows into a stratum of effluvia from the tanneries of Tuttlingen, and but for the fact that the town claims as its hero Max Schneckenburger, the author of the words of “Die Wacht am Rhein” who was educated here in his youth, and for the more cogent reason of hunger, we probably should have paddled past the town without pausing longer than to admire some of its architectural features. Tuttlingen is not all tanneries, although, as we approached, we thought it must be, by the smell. It is a goodly-sized place, with the usual castle, an unusual church, and red-tiled houses, many of them elaborately half-timbered. Opposite the town, which straggles along the right bank of the stream, a great open meadow is in process of reclamation from the floods, and is being converted into a park or public pleasureground. In this flat expanse of rough ground stands a great square mass of masonry, which will sometime or other support the statue of Schneckenburger, for the Tuttlingers are actively engaged in gathering subscriptions for this monument.

Schneckenburger can scarcely be called a poet, for these verses are probably the only ones of any account he ever wrote—at least, no others have been preserved—and they came from his pen at the age of twenty-one. Nine years later, in 1849, he died, having become established as a small merchant, after several years’ experience as a commercial traveller. From the accounts given of him by his widow, the distinctive feature of his character was patriotic fervor, which found its earliest expression in his choice of a motto, “Deutsch,” in his school-boy days, and later in the sentiments of “Die Wacht am Rhein.” The ever-active discussion in our camp, whether the extraordinary popularity of the patriotic song is due to the verses or to the music, is hereby passed on for final settlement to the readers of this narrative. We never could agree about it.

Hut for duck shooting

Neidingen.

As it was already late when we reached Tuttlingen, we proposed to hurry our dinner so as to have plenty of daylight to shoot the great weir which filled the air with its roaring. But the deliberate ways of German landlords are not easily changed, and we only succeeded in getting off in the late twilight. With some misgivings we paddled out into mid-stream, towards the sound of the falling water, between the two great bridges. The fame of our expedition

MAX SCHNECKENBURGER, AUTHOR OF “DIE WACHT AM RHEIN”

[From an old portrait]

had spread far and wide, and it was the hour of leisure, so the Tuttlingers had assembled by thousands along the banks and on the bridges to see the mad strangers come to grief in the cataract on the great weir. The sight of the black masses of people stimulated us almost to rashness, and, without mutual consultation, we steered straight for some snags which had caught on the angle of the weir, and jumping out into the knee-deep water, each of us shot his canoe over at the end of the painter fastened to the stern and, holding the line, scrambled down the incline where the water was shallowest, jumped into his canoe and swept away under the second bridge. All this was done in very little longer time than it takes to tell about it. When the three canoes appeared almost simultaneously in the smooth water below the second bridge, shouts of “Hip! Hip!” and “Glückliche Reise!” echoed from the hill-sides to the towers of Honberg Castle. We replied in chorus “Schneckenburger soll hoch leben!” and dramatically disappeared in the gathering darkness. A half-dozen youths, ambitious to discover where and how we were going to pass the night, followed us along the bank, and we were loath to make our first camp until we had gotten rid of them. We accordingly paddled on and on, scarcely able to see the banks, and at last found an apparently secluded spot and landed. We hauled up the canoes into the dew-drenched meadow, made our simple preparations for the night, and lay down in the snug, warm cockpits. The first night in camp is never a very restful one, and the unaccustomed and somewhat cramped berth with all sorts of sharp projecting corners and the hardest of floors, did not assist our slumbers. Nor did the visit of a bevy of peasant girls who had ventured out from a neighboring farm-house, which we had not noticed in the darkness, help us to lose consciousness as they stood for a long time in the moonlight chattering in soft voices and repeating the story of our exploit at the great weir, which had evidently been related to them by the youths whom we had successfully dodged when we landed. The heavy dew obliged us to cover up our berths in some way, and we tried the rubber blanket as the proper article for such a purpose. This was far too hot. Then we tried the deck hatches, which shut down so closely that they left no room for us to turn over and, besides, were as hot as the rubber blanket. So we passed the night between fitful naps and impatient struggles with temporary roofs. The sun had not begun to dissipate the river fog before we had taken our plunge and were ready for breakfast. By general understanding, the experienced cruiser, or Admiral of the fleet, was expected to do the cooking, and he had made elaborate preparations for this duty. The other two hungry members of the expedition watched the operation of preparing this first breakfast with eager interest, listening meanwhile to the words of wisdom which came from the chef as he sat in his canoe wedged into the narrow cockpit by all the paraphernalia of his temporary trade.

Below Mühlheim,
Kallenberg

“It’s no use to get out of your canoe to cook a meal,” he said, with a tone of authority that silenced our incipient suggestions as to a tidy spot on the flat surface of an adjacent rock. “It’s a thousand times simpler and easier to cook in your canoe, for your things are so handy. All you have to do is to sit just where you are and reach for whatever you want. Besides, you never lose anything, for nothing can get far out of sight in a canoe.”

All this time he was carefully arranging a towering, complex construction of tin and brass, with a large spirit-lamp beneath. It was a coffee-machine of his own invention, which, after having been charged with the various materials, was expected to make a most excellent brew at one operation. The water was to come to a boil at the same time with the milk, and then be forced in some mysterious way through the coffee, and come out café au lait of a quality not to be found this side Paris. Everything went on quite satisfactorily for a few minutes, and then the spectators saw a cloud of steam and a fountain of milk suddenly rise high into the air, and, simultaneously with the explosion, saw the cook leap from the canoe all ablaze and roll wildly in the long wet grass. The canoe was covered with flaming spirits, but the fire was extinguished with little difficulty. The milk was all lost, the coffee scattered into the remotest crevices of the cockpit, the eggs were broken, the bread soaked with a nauseous mixture, and breakfast was in a mess generally. Fortunately, the damage to the person of the cook was slight, but the laceration of his feelings was far more serious and lasting, and he gave up the position of cook of the expedition which he had talked about for six weeks and had filled for six minutes, and became second dish-washer and scullery-boy.

We were eager to be afloat once more, so we picked up a scratch breakfast and launched the canoes while the ring of the scythe was still in the air, and the busy spreaders had not yet begun their work.

Wernwag.

We shot three weirs in as many hours, and passed Neudingen, Mühlheim, and Friedingen before eleven o’clock. At the last-named village, a sweetly pastoral place among the hills, we encountered our first rapids, for the flood was so high that all the shallows in the river above had been quite covered, and we had seen white water at the weirs alone. The channel narrows at this point, the hills crowd close to the banks, and great gray crags rise from the dark foliage on the steep slopes. Ruins of castles crown almost every prominent summit, and the scenery grows wilder and more beautiful at every bend of the river. Kallenberg, Wildenstein, Wernwag, Falkenstein, and a half-score of other ruins, equally wonderful in situation, tempted us to sketch them, and we found the most delightful spots imaginable wherever we paused and exchanged the paddle for the pencil.

About eighteen miles below Tuttlingen, in the midst of the castle-crowned hills, we passed the monastery of Beuron, covering with its extensive buildings a great flat point in the river, under sheer towering limestone cliffs, surmounted by a grim black cross several hundred feet above the chapel spire.

Wildenstein

The monastery is imposing in extent but not in style, and the railway bridge close by does not add to the charm of the landscape. The rapid current hurried us on, not against our will, and we only paused to watch the monks haymaking in the meadows, wearing a dress which looked like a compromise between the costumes of a washerwoman and a Cape Cod fisherman. They must have suffered in the hot sun, with their gowns of heavy woollen stuff, but they suffered in silence, and did not deign to answer our greetings or even to turn their eyes upon us.

We practically finished the day’s cruise at the little village of Gutenstein, where we dined in the simple country gasthaus for a ridiculously trifling sum, and listened to the droning gossip of a lounging locksmith, who was minding his little child while the mother was at work in the hayfields. With the exception of this descendant of the Jan Steen type and the landlord and his wife, we saw only small children and decrepit old people. The rest were all at work haymaking, and we left before the population returned to the village. We selected our camp-ground—with an eye to beauty of situation as well as comfort—on a high point in a perfect paradise of wild-flowers. From Alfred Parsons’s note-book for the first two days of the cruise I take the following extract, which will give an idea of the wealth of the flora of this district:

THE MONKS OF BEURON

“From Donaueschingen downward the meadow flowers have a subalpine character—masses of ragged-robin and bladder-lychnis (the calyx of which is a delicate mauve), knotweed, various campanulas (one with bright mauve flowers in a very loose panicle), buttercups, purple sage, and grasses in flower. On the river banks for a long way down are masses of yellow iris, and occasionally sweet-calamus. In one meadow a purple variety of rocket; and generally the usual English meadow flowers. Lower down Campanula glomerata grows in fine purple masses with the sage; and in the rocky parts about Beuron were bright pinks, like the chedder-pink, Geranium sanguineum, and saxifrages. A bright blue veronica grows plentifully as you go down (Quære spicata?). Other plants on the rocks were a purple lactuca, dog-rose, systopteris, wall-rue, and Adiantum nigrum.”

As long as daylight lasted we botanized and sketched; and when twilight came on we watched the glowing hill-sides fade into a simple mass in silhouette against the starlit sky, and then slept like tired children.

CHAPTER III

UR camp was pitched very near the boundary line between Baden and Hohenzollern, and a short distance above Sigmaringen, the residential town of Prince Hohenzollern. We were prepared to meet a certain degree of stateliness in the tiny capital, and our anticipations were strengthened by the sight of a well-kept park on the river-bank long before the town came in view. There were summer-houses and pleasure-boats and other indications that the place belonged to somebody of importance in the neighborhood. Further, the natural scenery was marred by the conversion of a large overhanging limestone cliff into a mortuary slab in memory of a princess who died in 1841, and whose virtues were set forth in metal letters a foot long. We expected, then, to find the town distinguished by equal pretensions and bad taste, knowing too well how much destruction can be wrought in these modern times by the engines at command of every long purse. To our surprise and delight, however, the panorama which spread out before us as we approached Sigmaringen was one of great beauty, and the town, imposingly situated on a high promontory, made an unusually fine focus in the composition. We found on near acquaintance that the architecture, though not unpleasing, was by no means particularly interesting, and we did not delay there longer than was necessary to purchase a few stores.

About forty miles by rail and road to the north of Sigmaringen is the great castle of Hohenzollern, the seat of the imperial family of Prussia. The present castle is of modern construction, having been begun by Frederick William IV. and finally completed in 1867. It is remarkably bold in situation and commanding in appearance, and, although it has seldom sheltered any of the imperial family of late years, is kept up with great care and is garrisoned by quite a large force of troops.

Sigmaringen.

Sigmaringen marks the lower limit of the series of rocky gorges into which the river plunges near Friedigen, and soon after leaving the town we came into a more pastoral region again, similar to that of our first day’s cruise. The flora changed somewhat, and fewer varieties of plants were noticeable. Alfred Parsons makes the following remarks in his botanical note-book: “Below Sigmaringen the meadow flora becomes more like that of England, but still with campanulas and purple sage; also occasionally a bright crimson dianthus with clusters of flowers. In an ash wood beneath which we camped was an undergrowth of Spiræa aruncus, all in bloom, five or six feet in height; in the wood also were Turk’s-cap lilies, Jacobs-ladder, tall, pale-yellow phyteuma, and commonly, near the river, gelder-rose bushes and clumps of forget-me-nots and white water-buttercups. The general impression of the flora is a greater prevalence of purple and blue flowers.”

Hohenzollern.

Frequent villages dot the hill-sides on either side of the broad, fertile valley, and the river begins to feel a new tyranny of man in the partial canalization of its channel. The current now increased in speed between the artificially straightened banks, and, counting the kilometre marks as we swept along, we found we were making seven and a half kilometres (nearly five miles) an hour without lifting a paddle. A more satisfactory mode of progression never fell to the lot of any traveller. Perfect summer weather, a comfortable canoe to lounge in, beautiful landscapes on all sides;

NUNS AT RIEDLINGEN

and a vigorous current under the keel which gave an exhilarating sense of added strength, much like that felt when riding a spirited horse. Nothing more could be desired except, perhaps, unlimited time in which to enjoy such pleasant recreation. Haste was, indeed, a slight drawback to our enjoyment. We did not dare delay, for the season was already in its full prime, and we knew that the gales began in the lower river as early as the first week of September; besides, one of the party had only a limited number of weeks at his disposal. Under other circumstances we would have spent a day or more at Riedlingen, where we found most interesting architecture along the river-front and saw a party of nuns at work in a hay-field. We had a little more social success with them than we did with their coreligionists, the monks at Beuron, for they turned their great, cool, flapping head-dresses in our direction, and actually seemed temporarily interested in our canoes, and in us as well.

A threatening storm drove us to seek shelter at dinnertime in a rural gasthaus in a little priest-ridden hamlet where a morose landlady gave us excellent bread and milk in rude earthen bowls, and was prevailed upon to part with some of her store of fresh bread and eggs. The peasants came hurrying into the village to escape the rain, their creaking carts piled high with hay and the sturdy little horses white with sweat. It was a ready-made picture from “Hermann and Dorothea.” We had occasion to regret in the night that we had not brought our tents, for it rained steadily for hours, and the rubber blankets rigged on the paddles made an inefficient shelter against the driving storm. But we were none the worse the next morning, and as soon as the ring of scythes of the women mowing in the next field woke us from our sound sleep we were up, cooked breakfast, and were soon off down pleasant reaches with overhanging rocks and occasional ruins frowning down from the pinnacled crags.

Every mile or two we passed a village, each more picturesque than its neighbor, and all with sonorous names that suggest places of great importance—Rechtenstein, Obermarschthal, Munderkingen, Rottenacker. Each village had its weir and its mill, and sometimes two of them. Various accidents occurred, none of them of a startling nature, and none resulting in anything worse than temporary

CROSSING THE WEIR—ROTTENACKER

PEASANT GIRLS MOWING

inconvenience. The Admiral of the fleet, trusting too much in his knowledge of river navigation, swamped his canoe in a weir, and would have been in a sad strait but for the timely assistance of some mill hands. The canoes got some heavy bumping at times while we were shooting rapids below the weirs; but there was little or no injury done to them, and the only actual loss of property was one favorite brierwood pipe—a loss which will appeal to the sympathy of every smoker who has tried the pipes of central Europe. We happened to reach Rottenacker at noon, when a great procession of rustics, armed with every imaginable kind of haymaking implements, was crossing the bridge to their labors after the mid-day meal. They halted on the bridge, looking for all the world like a detachment from Monmouth’s army, and watched us run the canoes over the weir. They gave a hoarse shout of approval of our skill, and after we had dashed down under the great wooden bridge they marched off in almost martial array, and scattered over the broad meadows like skirmishers. An hour later we reached the last weir on the river at the village of Oepfingen, and, confident from the appearance of the water that the canoes would float on it with our weight, we triumphantly paddled over the crest and shot safely into the boiling pool below. We had counted in all only twenty-one weirs and dams, although the different accounts of expeditions in the upper river give the number as twenty-five between Donaueschingen and Ulm. In all probability the unusually high water covered some of the smaller ones, and we consequently failed to make a record of them.

BRIDGE AT ROTTENACKER

Below the last weir the river is monotonous and the country not particularly interesting. Turnip-topped church-spires rise above the red-tiled roofs of villages clustered on the hill-sides, and but for these features of the landscape the river might be the Thames or the Avon. Soon, however, several vigorous streams add their waters to the main current, its speed and strength rapidly increases, and its course is regulated into a straight and canal-like channel. Not realizing the speed of our progress as we floated along, we came in sight of the village of Erbach on the hills to the left of the river much earlier in the afternoon than we expected, and at the same moment saw, far beyond in the blue distance, as faintly outlined as a delicate cloud-form, the great tower of the Cathedral of Ulm breaking the low horizon line. We at once took to our paddles and increased our pace, urged on by the sight of our goal for the night and the beginning of our cruise in the navigable river. In full sight of the city, some two miles away, we passed the Iller, rushing in with a broad, pale-green flood and a strange hissing noise like the escape of gas from soda-water, and then the Danube, reinforced in strength and in volume, tore along with almost angry speed, and showed great swirls where the pale waters of the Iller wrestled with the opaque yellow of the larger stream. We saw by the white waters at the buttresses of the railway bridge as we dashed past that we had to deal with a current far more powerful than any we had yet navigated, and accordingly approached the left shore with some caution, as there was a high wall along the water’s edge and only an occasional practicable landing-place. With all our efforts to stop our head-way we found ourselves obliged to turn the bow up-stream and paddle hard to keep from being swept past the town. In this way we came alongside the float of the Donau Ruder Verein (Danube Rowing Club), and landed, welcomed by a delegation from the committee of the club, who had heard of our intended visit. They gave us a hand to carry the canoes up to the boat-house and made room for them on the padded trestles.

The club boat-house is a fair-sized building, well enough constructed for the purpose, and conveniently fitted up with quarters for the crews and stowage room for the boats, which number nearly a score, several of them from famous makers in England, but mostly of German build. Notwithstanding the disadvantages of rowing in so rapid a current, and the difficulties of launching and landing the boats, the members practise with great enthusiasm, and the club has a remarkably good record in the boating annals of Germany. The committee placed all the resources of the institution at our command, and not only gave us every assistance in repairing the slight damages which our canoes had suffered in the rough treatment they had received at the weirs, but made other generous offers of hospitality. The president, who is a mechanical genius of considerable fame as well as an enthusiastic sportsman and a traveller, was devoted to our interests, and made every moment of our stay agreeable. Before we departed our ex-cook presented the club with his famous coffee machine as a slight acknowledgment of their kindness to us. We have never learned how much the ranks of the Donau Ruder Verein have been decimated by the use of this dangerous invention.

Ulm, whether it be approached by land or by water, has the uninteresting external appearance of any modern military stronghold, for it is surrounded by great fortifications, and an elaborately constructed citadel occupies the whole of a flat point opposite the town on the right bank of the river. The old town itself, once the military barrier is passed, is a marvel of architecture and a maze of narrow, crooked thoroughfares, many of them scarcely worthy to be dignified by the name of streets. The wonderful cathedral, next in size to that at Cologne, with the loftiest stone tower in the world, is not to be adequately described within the limits of this narrative, nor was it, indeed, thoroughly examined by us on this hasty visit. The town offered so much to occupy our attention and command our admiration that we could only pause to study briefly each superb monument of ancient art and hurry on to the next. The restless river with its rushing current had communicated its nervous haste to our spirits, and within twenty-four hours we had seen the town, repaired and repacked our canoes, adjusted the appliances intended for use in the large river below, and were waiting only for the farewell festivities in the boat club to come to an end in order to launch our canoes to the “Hip! hip!” of our sporting friends.

The president of the rowing club, with an enthusiastic young friend, accompanied us in our start from Ulm, in one tiny, home-made canoe which floated scarcely an inch above the water. Their scorn of the dangers of the curling flood filled us with admiration, but we could not affect the indifference which is born only of long familiarity with the Danube, and proceeded with our usual care. Great yellow billows surged against the stone piers of the old bridge as we shot with dizzy speed through the shadow of the arch out into the broad stream below. It began to rain, but we paddled all the harder in order to reach the village of Günzburg as early as possible, so that we might have time to dine and afterwards make camp before dark. The rain did not in anywise diminish our ardor for sleeping in the canoes, for we had passed a feverish night in a stuffy hotel bedroom and longed for the air and freedom of our camp.

WOOD-SAWYER AT ULM

The stork’s nest on the highest gable of the interesting old town was scarcely visible in the twilight when we paddled away after a jovial dinner with our friends, who were to ship themselves and their canoe back to Ulm by train. As we pushed out into the stream the distances were so exaggerated by the dim light that the Danube now looked like a broad lake or an arm of the sea, and the strongly eddying current twisted our paddles with a vicious persistence that warned us to be circumspect in choosing a landing-place in the uncertain light. Luck more than judgment directed us to a pretty little secluded meadow where, for the first time, we made camp in regular order, tents and all.

FROM STRASBURG TO ULM

The question of choosing camp was, as we now fully understood, a more or less difficult one, for, as the three canoes were seldom very near together on the river, it would be practically impossible to fix on a desirable place by common agreement at the time of camping. We therefore appointed the most experienced camper a committee of one to choose the camp in the future, and agreed to abide by his decision. A special instinct, or at least an accurate and ready judgment, must be the absolute qualification of the one who chooses halting-places along a river like the Danube, for the current, running as it does from three to six miles an hour, makes it impossible to make the selection at leisure. Before there is time to weigh the reasons for and against the spot the stream has carried the canoe past the landing-place, and return is practically out of the question. We demanded of our camp grounds more and at the same time less than the ordinary cruiser. First, they must be in as agreeable a landscape as possible, for as we spent several hours of daylight there we wanted to sketch and to enjoy the scenery. Then they must be so situated that the canoes could be drawn up readily and prepared for the night without carrying the traps too far. On the other hand, sand, turf, or smooth surface of the ground, though desirable, was, fortunately, not an absolute necessity, as they would have been if we had not slept in our canoes. Further, as we used spirits for cooking, we did not have to consider the question of wood, and the absence of fire made our camps very little objectionable to the farmers. Indeed, we were made welcome to temporary occupation in every instance but one, and on that occasion the farmer evidently thought we intended to remain all summer long, for he began to talk about the second crop of grass. A largess of German coin of the value of ten cents made him waive all objections and give us the freedom of his meadow.

CHAPTER IV

T was on Saturday, June 27th, at about five o’clock in the afternoon that we left Ulm, and the following day about noon we reached Lauingen, having spent most of the forenoon in camp rigging our sails, properly adjusting the tents, and doing a hundred other odd jobs which the ownership of every boat entails. The Admiral, who had preceded the rest of the fleet by an hour or more, was in the centre of an interested group of natives when we hauled alongside at the landing, and all Lauingen in its Sunday best was lounging near by, happy in the entertainment which the arrival of the strange craft offered. The old town walls are half hidden by excrescences of modern construction which cling to them for their whole extent, sheltering a notable proportion of the inhabitants. With this exception the place is not materially changed since the sixteenth century, and still has to a very remarkable degree the character of an old Dutch town both in details of construction and in the general character of the domestic architecture. Most of the large buildings are warehouses and residences combined, and there are few front doors which are not provided with a little side window or squint set in at an angle so that the street can be seen without opening the door. All distinctive costume has been modernized out of the place. The people look cheerful, active, and prosperous to a degree unusual in such a remote town, and we were fain to believe that this vitality was due to the leaven of those of the inhabitants who had been to America, not a few of whom greeted us with an exaggerated Hoboken dialect. But the modern spirit has not obliterated all the queer old customs, and Sunday was busy with parades of turnvereins and sporting clubs with all the pageantry common to the ancient guilds. In the midst of the festivities a stately carriage drove into the market-place where the statue of Albertus Magnus, the famous scholar of the thirteenth century, was erected ten years ago in the shadow of the great tower with its sixteen stories. It was a wonderful old vehicle, with broad leathern springs and great hood, a huge rack behind piled high with luggage, a seat in front occupied by a servant—a buxom country girl—and with a long pole like a single shaft, to which one horse was attached in a sort of casual fashion by a harness of the most antiquated and peculiar pattern. Under the hood sat a young man who held the lines and guided the horse across the square towards the inn, while the servant-girl, with folded arms, occasionally nodded and smiled at friends in the multitude. We fancied this must be some local dignitary, such was the grandeur and stateliness of the turnout, but we found on inquiry that it was only a conveyance from a neighboring town bringing a commercial traveller with his packs. Truly, even this much-derided occupation has its agreeable features in Bavaria.

It was an exceedingly hot day, and the river for the next dozen miles or so was not very interesting, as its channel had been confined between dike-like banks through a great steaming marsh. Every two hundred metres of the distance is marked by a numbered post, and from our low position these were often the most prominent objects in view. The hissing of the water, which began at the confluence of the Iller, was always plainly heard, but the water was so muddy that we could not discover whether or not the cause of the sound was, as it is said to be, the rolling of pebbles on the river-bed. The reaction from our brief but busy visit to Lauingen put us in rather a quiet frame of mind. The drowsy heat was not stimulating to the ambition for sight-seeing, and we scarcely looked at the hills where the battle-fields of Höchstädt and Blenheim are located, they were so far away from the river and the events seemed so very long ago. We had more interest, moreover, in the near foreground with its occasional clusters of brilliant bloom. Alfred Parsons says of this region: “For a long way above and below Ulm the banks are lined with small willows and coarse grasses; occasional bunches of forget-me-not and some iris and valerian are the only flowers. On a hill-side near Donauwörth I saw bright pink dog-roses, campanulas, geranium, veronica, epipactis, Turk’s-cap lilies, pink coronilla, which is abundant, and a tall white composite with groups of daisy-like flowers and a leaf like the tansy; also a white erigeron.”

The Bell tower

Lauingen.

The glorious, lazy afternoon was well on the wane when we came to Donauwörth, a blaze of richly-colored roofs and lichen-stained walls and with an enchanting skyline of gables and towers. We left it with reluctance before we had seen half of its beauties. The restlessness of the Danube had begun to eat into our souls and, without our knowing it, had created in us a new appetite—a craving for constant motion.

Donauwörth.

Not far below Donauwörth the Lech contributes its pale-green waters, flowing northerly from the water-shed of the distant Alps beyond Lake Constance, and it brought down to us for our entertainment several rafts with cheery river folk, and we began the next day in their company. They ran ashore at the upper end of the town of Neuburg, where the Danube is crossed by a large stone bridge, and we stopped there as well. Finding, however, that we were uncomfortably far from the centre of the town, we soon paddled off again, shot the seething rapids under the bridge and, hurried along by the current, landed after some difficulty and serious bumping against the perpendicular stone wall, at a broad flight of stone steps opposite a cheerful-looking hotel with a formal row of standard roses all along in front, tied to neatly-painted sticks surmounted by gilded balls. We had already gone ashore when our attention was called to our canoes by the excited shouts of the crowd hanging over the stone parapet. To our horror we saw one of the long rafts swinging down under the bridge with irresistible momentum directly upon our canoes, and the raftsmen making frantic gestures at us. We understood that in order to check the raft they were obliged to beach her in the shallow water near the steps, and, indeed, she was headed for that point, and no human power could stop her. For a moment it seemed as if our canoes must be ground to splinters, but we rushed down and promptly dragged them a few yards up-stream, utilizing the noisome mouth of a sewer for a harbor for one, and lifting the others bodily out upon a narrow ledge of broken rock. Then, dashing into the water, we put all our strength against the raft and she ground along within a foot of our precious boats, and we were saved from our friends.

It took an unusual quantity of beer to cool us off after this exertion, and our afternoon cruise was not further remarkable except for the sight of various immense ferry-boats swinging across the stream attached to wire guys and bearing two great loads of hay, cattle and all, and for a visit to Ingolstadt, a military post of great importance and correspondingly unattractive aspect. We camped that night on the beautiful point of a low meadow where our shadows fell in long lines towards the neighboring town of Vohburg, almost too picturesque to be real, and were promptly and unwillingly introduced to our first Danube mosquitoes, who kept us diverted if not very much amused during dinner, and until we had crawled into our curtained berths and let them buzz and pipe in futile rage against the impenetrable gauze.

THE FERRY

Vohburg is said to be the most virtuous town in Bavaria, the reward of virtue there being a dowry of 50 guldens ($25) to each maiden of unblemished reputation when she takes the marriage vows. One of the notable results of this bounty is the encouragement of intermarriage, for the youths are of frugal dispositions, and fifty guldens are fifty guldens here quite as much as anywhere. Our first visitors the next morning were the storks of the town who solemnly sought the early worm and the casual frog, and they took flight at the approach of a troop of the ugliest children to be found where the German language is heard—and that is saying a great deal. They stood a long time in a circle around our camp, either too much astonished or too stupid to reply to our volley of questions. We couldn’t help thinking, as we looked at their unintelligent faces, that it would be much better for the race if the dowry fund should be embezzled by the town-clerk and vice rule triumphant for a while. Our curiosity was not satisfied by this slight glimpse of the inhabitants of Vohburg, and besides, the ancient town gates, the massive ruins of the burgh—which was destroyed, like everything else about here, by the Swiss in 1641—and the old church-tower, stuck full of great stone cannon balls, tempted us to land. Possibly the impression gained from a brief visit was not a just one, but although we found the architecture interesting and the people friendly and courteous, we could distinguish nothing of the charm which our imaginations had pictured to us as the result of generations of prosperity, peace, and domestic virtue.

The Danube is never really monotonous, for, apart from the ever-changing landscape, the life on the bank offers endless interest to the observer. We had drifted for a couple of days through a broad, flat country, and never had experienced a dull moment. Although we were not impatient for a change of scenery, we began to look forward with pleasant anticipations, soon after leaving Vohburg, to the chain of hills that formed the horizon to the east and north, promising narrow gorges and rapid water. Except for our increasing eagerness for progress as the hills began to take definite shape in detail towards the middle of the forenoon, we should have undoubtedly landed at Eining, a little cluster of houses on the right bank, near which are the remains of the great Roman frontier station Abusina, which, from its topographical situation, and also from its geographical position near the most northerly point of the river’s course, was chosen as the chief outpost of the Danube provinces against the German barbarians. This station was maintained with two or three interruptions from its establishment in 15 B.C. until the end of the fifth century. Across the river are distinctly visible the outlines of Trajan’s wall, which extended from this point to Wiesbaden on the Rhine. We were much interested by what we could see of these remains, for we knew that to be but the first in the long series of similar monuments along the Danube to the Roman occupation, which never fail to excite the wonder of the traveller at the enterprise and persistent courage of the great Roman general. Near at hand, too, is Vergen of the “Niebelungenlied,” where King Gunther and his Niebelungen crossed the Danube on their way to Budapest and the court of King Attila. It was at this spot that Hagen tried to drown the priest of the expedition because the water witches had predicted that the holy man alone out of the 10,000 in the expedition should return safe to Worms. The facts of history and the fascinating figments of tradition seemed to draw for us across this smiling valley a frontier clearly defined in our imaginations, beyond which limit we were to enter upon a new phase of our journey.

FROM ULM TO STRAUBING

The Benedictine abbey of Weltenburg, with its crenellated walls and extensive façades, placed in exactly the right spot on the river-bank, like the composition of the theatrical drop-curtain, stands at the head of a narrow, rocky gorge, about four miles in length, more grand and impressive than any on the river above. Weltenburg is an easy excursion from Kelheim, and divides the attraction of the neighborhood with the Befreiungshalle, or Hall of Liberation, near the latter place. Knowing this fact, we were not surprised to find in the midst of the mournful relics of past grandeur the liveliest kind of a beer-garden, with a half-acre of tables under shade trees in the court-yard, and regiments of stone mugs waiting to be filled at the convenient tap of

Between Weltenberg Er Kelheim.

a great brewery in one of the monastery buildings. The clock struck twelve as we entered the enclosure. Every one rose and uncovered his head, and stood like the scattered supernumeraries on the operatic stage. The peal of the organ in the adjacent church added to the dramatic effect, and if the whole company had burst forth in a chorus we would have been little surprised at it. The gorgeousness of the church interior contrasts painfully with the poverty of the establishment, only too plainly indicated by the

AN EARLY VISITOR

ill-kept grounds and the general air of neglect on all sides. Excursionists frequently take the short trip through the gorge in small flat-boats rowed by women, and there is another monastery on the left bank, half-way down, so there need be no more than thirty minutes between jorums of beer, the important adjuncts of these trips. The river, narrowed to one-third of its width above, winds between perpendicular limestone cliffs so smooth that it has been necessary to attach iron rings to the rock at intervals near the water’s edge for the use of boatmen, and the women rowers often tie up their boats to these rings to rest during the upward trip. The heavily-wooded hills overhanging the left bank at the lower end of the gorge are crowned by the Befreiungshalle, a huge, circular building in classical style, begun by Lewis I. of Bavaria in 1852, and inaugurated on October 18, 1863, the fiftieth anniversary of the battle of Leipsic. This monumental structure is of imposing dimensions, the dome rising nearly 200 feet above the great stone platform, reached by a noble flight of steps. On the exterior the different provinces of Germany are represented by eighteen colossal female figures, with corresponding trophies and candelabra, and the interior, which is lined with polished marble of various colors, is surrounded by white marble angels symbolical of victory, with tablets bearing the names of famous German generals, bronze shields made from captured French guns, and inscriptions celebrating various battles.

Landing at Kelheim we toiled up the steep hill in the hot sun, and then cooled ourselves in the twilight of the interior, skating in felt slippers over the mirror-like pavement, and listening to the remarkable echoes which magnified the slightest sound into thunder. We were waylaid on our descent from the hill by a garrulous ex-citizen of Brooklyn, whose fulsome praise of Americans and everything American finally drove us out of the cool shelter of a river-side beer-garden and into the blistering cockpits of the canoes. We set forth with the vague intention of passing the night somewhere above and near Ratisbon. Even before we came in sight of the town we looked everywhere for a camp ground, but a high-road on either side left not an acre of ground at the water’s edge where we could land without becoming the focus of observation from a dozen farm-houses. We therefore pushed on until sunset, and just as the beautiful twin towers of Ratisbon cathedral loomed up across a wide open valley to the east, we landed on a quiet meadow, carpeted with sweet grass, and there we slept until the peasants trudging to market along the bank in the early morning awoke us with their voices.

CHAPTER V

HE busiest part of Ratisbon is the twelfth-century stone bridge which, from daybreak until dark, resounds to the tramp of heavy-footed peasants, and to the clatter of farm wagons and other vehicles. A narrow street plunges from the end of the bridge under the archway of an old city gate into a maze of narrow thoroughfares with towering mediæval houses and a jumble of small shops of all kinds. One of the houses near the bridge has a startling decoration covering the whole of its front—a colossal figure of Goliath painted on the stucco—and there are preserved in some of the other streets the only specimens extant of the fortified dwelling-houses of the Middle Ages. The Cathedral of St. Peter, with its exquisite Gothic details, is one of the chief architectural glories of all Germany, and in its solemn interior are forgot for the time the Danube, its hurrying current, and the impatient canoes. The fact that we were not in the ordinary costume of travellers gave us immunity from the annoyances of guides, and this freedom added wonderfully to our enjoyment of Ratisbon. We sat on the clean pavement of the great market-place, in the shadow of church walls, and nearly made ourselves ill with quantities of wild strawberries from the baskets of the friendly market-girls close by, paying a ridiculously small sum for a quart of the luscious fruit. We wandered in and out of the churches, stood and gazed at our ease on the architectural beauties of the town, and never were we once spoken to, or even, to our knowledge, once stared at with curiosity. Even our presence in the crowded tavern, where the crowds of market-people took their mid-day meal, did not excite any comment, and during the few hours we passed in Ratisbon we had the supreme satisfaction of passing unnoticed, which rarely comes to any one in a foreign country. It is said that 17 per cent. of the 35,000 inhabitants of the city are Protestants, but we concluded that we did not come in contact with any of the choice minority in religious belief, for we saw on all sides shrines and crosses and other indications of the strict adherence of the people to the observances of the Roman Catholic faith.

The old stone bridge has been saddled with a bad reputation among river-folk ever since some one started the legend, long ages ago, that the devil had a hand in its construction. It crosses the river at the upper end of a rocky island which divides the stream into two unequal parts, the one on the town side alone being navigable. Four narrow arches, springing from immense boat-shaped piers, confine the current into a very narrow compass, and cause the water to rush under the bridge with great velocity. We had listened to a long description by our boating friends at Ulm of the dangers of shooting this bridge, and all the river-side people we had talked with for the previous day or two had warned us of the perils of the passage. But we saw from the parapet what we had to encounter in the shape of rapids and whirlpools, and did not hesitate to trust ourselves and our canoes to the mercies of the current. The first of the series of bugbears which were in turn presented to us by the Danube river-folk, and by the accounts we had read, was disposed of in such an easy manner that the mention of it is scarcely warranted by its importance as an episode of our journey.

RATISBON FROM THE BRIDGE

Opposite the lower part of the town the Danube receives the turbid waters of the Regen (hence the German name Regensburg) coming in from the north, and then the great river settles down into a gently-flowing, well-behaved water highway, at times lively with steam tow-boats, barges, and rafts. It skirts the hills on the left bank for five or six miles, and then lazily meanders away through the great plain of Straubing, the chief grain-growing district of Bavaria. The point where the river leaves the hills is the most northerly limit of its whole course, and here it changes its general north-easterly direction—which it has held with many minor variations since Donaueschingen—and bears away in a south-easterly course towards Vienna. This angle is not far from midway between these two places, which are 535 miles apart by the river channel. On one of the great rounded hills, fully 300 feet above the water’s edge, the great German Temple of Fame, the Walhalla, makes a conspicuous landmark. Lewis I. of Bavaria, who, it will be remembered, was the founder of the Befreiungshalle, saw the completion of the Walhalla the very year he laid the corner-stone of its fellow monument, thirty miles away, in 1842. It is a classical structure built in imitation of the Parthenon, but of somewhat larger dimensions, and occupies a most commanding position. We saw by the guide-book that it contained Victories and Walkyries, busts of heroes, and friezes painted to celebrate the early history of the German race. After the perfect harmony of the Ratisbon cathedral we had no appetite for German classicality, and paddled past, content to gaze from afar upon the noble proportions of the temple.

Although we had rain the night before, it was hotter than ever as the sun mounted high in the heavens, and before we had penetrated far into the heart of the great plain we found the air so dead and the heat so oppressive that we

RETURNING FROM MARKET, RATISBON

were obliged to paddle in self-defence, and by this means create a draught along the water. The glare of the sun was reflected into our eyes with painful brilliancy; a few dazzling clouds hung in the sky, apparently quite stationary. The pitiless force of the sun was never once hidden by a veil of vapor during the hours we paddled down the current, which scarcely rippled the surface of the water, as dense in appearance as molten lead. The town of Straubing, plainly enough visible when we left the hills, and

seemingly only a short distance away, avoided us for a long time with aggravating success. Now it would loom up in front of us, now on one side and again on the other, and often hid away behind us. At last, about noon, having quite lost our points of compass in the contortions of the river, we sneaked up to the will-of-the-wisp town, and, dodging around a point, came fairly upon it and landed there. We made it a rule in this part of the river, and, indeed, wherever towns and villages were frequent, to take our mid-day meal in some hotel or restaurant, for, unless we did so, we saw absolutely nothing of the shore life. By this time our standard for towns had become so high that we could not care much for Straubing, although the stay there refreshed us and interested us somewhat; but we were off down the sluggish stream, eager to reach the hills where we knew the current would be faster and the landscape more interesting. Near Bogen, a few miles below, at the hour in the afternoon when the heat of the sun seems more intense even than at full noon, the western sky was suddenly darkened, and a dense storm-cloud rapidly raised its jagged edge towards the zenith. Opinions varied as to the advisability of riding out the threatening squall, or going ashore to wait for it to pass. We paddled on for a considerable distance discussing this question, and finally decided to run ashore near a large farm-house resembling in character a large Alpine chalet. We landed not one moment too soon, for before we got our hatches fastened we heard the roar of the wind up-stream, and the next instant the squall tore down the river, lashing the water into a sheet of foam, and bending the trees like switches. Our loose rigging stood straight out in the blast, and the hastily-furled sails fluttered like clewed-up top-sails in an Atlantic gale. We had all we could do to keep the boats from being blown bodily along the rough beach. In a few minutes the violence of the gale abated, and a heavy rain set in. We made our little fleet as snug as possible and as safe as we could by lashing the masts together, and ran to the farm-house near by, where the farmer and his family welcomed us with dignified courtesy, and offered us the freedom of the house with such hearty good-will that we could not help making ourselves at home. It was a characteristic establishment of the better class, and the main building was of some antiquity, as the date 1683 on the lintel of the front door testified. This immense structure was mostly of wood, and a great shingled roof covered not only a large living apartment, with many bedrooms, but the stables for the horses and cattle as well. Most of the farm-work was evidently done by girls, and the farmer told us he employed them because they were almost as useful as the men, and their wages were only fifty guldens ($25) a year. A half-dozen of these girls, indifferent to the pouring rain, with short petticoats, tight bodices, and with kerchiefs on their heads, were carrying manure in hand-barrows when we arrived, and when they had finished this task, and had materially increased the huge pile that occupied the only front yard there was, they all had a vigorous scrub at the pump, and then came in and ate bread and milk with us, and chattered away as freely as if we were old friends. We were loath to leave this pleasant, pastoral company, but as the sky was bright again at sunset we felt obliged to be off. We did not succeed in persuading any one to take the money which we felt was due for the food we had eaten, so we dropped it in the poor-box near the forlorn little chapel, and paddled away to a camp on a dripping hill-side, where we found a delicious cold spring and a mossy bed for our canoes to rest on.

We had met at intervals since leaving Ratisbon great empty flat-boats towed up-river by horses, and an

LOCAL FREIGHT FLAT-BOAT

occasional one laden with shingles or other building material had drifted down past our camp before we started in the morning. As high up as Ulm we had seen these boats in process of construction, and had learned all about the cheap flat-boats which in the spring-time carry cargoes to the lower river, and are then broken up for the sake of their timber. We had expected to see much more of this kind of river life than we actually met with, but the fact is the competition of the railways has practically killed this kind of river commerce, and its glories are all in the past. The local business still continues to flourish, however, for many of the river towns have no connection with the railway, and depend almost entirely on the water highway for cheap transportation of freight. The day after the storm we ran across several of the great local freight-boats floating down with the current. These boats are ordinarily about 20 yards in length, 5 or 6 in beam, and with a depth of from 4 to 6 feet from the great flat, keelless bottom to the rail. The bow is high, and the stern-post is often carved and otherwise decorated. They are built of soft wood, the seams are calked with moss, and since paint is seldom used except on the perpendicular black stripes, which is the almost universal fashion for boats on the German and Austrian Danube, the life of the best of these craft is not often more than ten years. Each boat has a small, rude skiff for convenient use, and a supplementary scow large enough to carry considerable cargo, as well as afford open-air stabling for a pair of strong horses. On the down trip the horses lead a lazy life in their floating stall, but on the return they drag the empty boats up against the rapid current, trained to know every yard of the way, for the varying heights of the river and the conformation of the banks make a regular towpath out of the question, and the horses splash along through the shallows for miles at a stretch. The crew of these boats usually consists of an experienced skipper with two men and a boy. They all take turns at the steering-oar, and are constantly obliged to handle the immense sweeps to keep the cumbersome craft in the best channel. The work of baling water is no light one, and apparently goes on day and night with little intermission. They use for this purpose a great wooden scoop, or shovel, and throw the water out over the side from the floor of the rude little hut which shelters the bunks of the crew.

Two of us accepted a cheery invitation to go aboard one of these boats, and we spent the larger part of the forenoon lounging in the shade of the deck-house and indolently watching the ever-changing panorama on either side of the river. The skipper, a very fatherly old man, a shrewd observer, with a great knowledge of river life, was busy part of the time in tending a large tin kettle which was thrust, gypsy-like, into the side of a fire which was brightly burning on the tiles with which the boat was laden. As soon as we saw that the meal was almost ready to be served we made a move to leave, not wishing to interrupt this ceremony. But the old man detained us almost by force, and insisted on our eating before they began. He placed

ON THE TILE-BOAT

between us a large bowl of coarse, yellow-glazed pottery, gave us a wooden spoon apiece, and a thick wedge of black bread, which we broke, according to his commands, into the capacious vessel. When the soup was ready he poured it over the bread, filled the bowl to the brim, handed us each a bottle of beer, and bade us eat and drink until not a crumb or a drop remained. We were hungry, the soup was delicious, and the beer cool and refreshing, and we did not longer hesitate, but fell to at once. The only thing which interfered with our full enjoyment of the meal was the presence of a generous supply of beef in the soup, in chunks as large as our fists. Our maxillary muscles were not sufficiently well developed to enable us to masticate the phenomenally tough fibre of this meat, and we chose our opportunity when the broad back of the hospitable skipper was turned and slid it overboard. To our relief it went to the bottom like a sounding lead, and did not, as we feared, come bobbing up astern to bear witness to our insincerity. We gave our host a tiny American flag as a souvenir of our visit. He would take no money nor any of our stores, but was delighted with the Stars and Stripes, more especially as we had explained that the following day was Freiheit’s Tag, or Independence Day, in the great Republic of the West. We left him diligently digging a hole with his knife in the high stem-piece of the boat to plant the flag there.

Rowing clubs are numerous all along the river from Ulm to Vienna. Soon after leaving the flat-boat we landed at one near Deggendorf, a quiet old town with miraculous relics in the church, which attract many thousands of pious pilgrims annually. Later on in the day, as we were rounding a great bend in a solitary part of the river where we least expected to see anything afloat, we suddenly met a single-scull boat of the newest pattern shooting up the river like an arrow. A handsome athletic young fellow was pulling with all his might, evidently in training for a race. Our surprise was naturally mutual, for he no more expected to see a fleet of graceful, polished canoes than we did to see the Danube waters parted by the keen bow of a racing boat. He recovered from his astonishment first, and shouted heartily, “Hip! hip! Hip! hip!” We replied with the same salutation, for we had learned by this time that this call was not, as we had at first supposed, a playful imitation of the English cheer, but the common greeting in boating circles. We needed no further introduction, and could, indeed, have had no better one than our canoes, and we freely accepted the hospitalities of the Winzer Ruder Verein, whose tidy boat-house stands on the river-bank a mile or more from the village. The club has a membership of thirty-six, all of them sturdy young fellows of the neighborhood, with an enthusiastic love of water sports. A certain count, the local magnate, is the patron of the club, and contributes largely towards the training of the oarsmen, who compete with success in the regattas all over Germany. The jolly young fellows made so much of us, and received us so heartily into their brotherhood, that we had not the courage to explain that we were not real boating men at all, but only temporary members of the guild. Indeed, it is doubtful if they would have believed our statement, for we were quite as sunburned as they were, and our five days’ canoing had put us in first-rate physical condition. But on this, as on several other similar occasions, we had a lingering feeling of mental discomfort, because we could not help knowing that we were passing for what we were not, and never expected to be—sporting men.

CHAPTER VI

HE poplars of Passau came in sight early on the morning of the Fourth of July, but we had no intention of celebrating the day, particularly as one-third of our party took only a languid interest in the event. Neither did we care to meet any more boating men, however agreeable they might be, for, besides the consciousness of our false position, we had a realizing sense of the value of our time, and almost begrudged the hours spent at these boating entertainments. We avoided the rowing club at Passau, and stole in behind a floating bath-house and hid our canoes away there. This move did not save us, however, for as we were crossing the bridge, two rowing men who had seen us come down-stream were on hand to waylay us, and before we could enter a protest we were whisked off to luncheon. The town is attractively situated on a high promontory at the junction of the Inn and the Danube, and is, indeed, as far as natural environments go, one of the most beautiful spots of the whole river. The town itself, or at least as much of it as we were allowed by our friends to examine, is full of interest, although not distinguished by any remarkable monuments of art. The unruly Inn, which is always ready to overflow at a moment’s notice, comes rushing into the Danube with a dirty yellow, rubbish-strewn flood, and gives the larger river a sturdy shouldering for a long distance down-stream. It is the contamination of the Danube by the Inn that changes its color below Passau. Above this town it is in ordinary seasons of a greenish color, and sometimes, in the deep, shady pools, of an intense and beautiful blue; but the Danube as we saw it from Villingen, near the source, to Vilkoff at its mouth, was always of nearly the same monotonous, pale color of café au lait.

FROM STRAUBING TO DÜRRENSTEIN

From Ratisbon down we had met occasional freight steamers and tow-boats, and at Passau saw our first passenger steamers—comfortable little craft, which make the popular trip from this place to Linz, fifty-six miles below, in about four hours. The right bank of the Danube below the mouth of the Inn belongs to Austria, and the left bank, for fifteen miles or so, to Bavaria. The Austrian customs-station on the river is at a little hamlet called Engelhardszell, and just above this place the frontier line is marked by a peculiar isolated rock in mid-stream, surmounted by a shrine and crucifix and the rude figure of a saint. We were obliged to go ashore at Engelhardszell to pay river toll on our canoes, and, notwithstanding our strange appearance, each barefooted and sunburned, we met with the greatest civility and courtesy, and paid our sixteen kreutzers (eight cents) apiece without a murmur. Below the frontier the river narrows to half its width, and the speed of the current increases in proportion. The average fall per mile is also much greater in this part of the river than it is from Ulm to this point. From Ulm to Ratisbon the average fall per mile is 1.5 feet; from Ratisbon to Passau, 0.625; from Passau to Linz, 2.5, from Linz to Grein, 2.8, and from Grein to Vienna, 2.876. The flora has varied somewhat since the last reference was made to the botanist’s note-book, and the information on the subject is sure to be interesting:

“Below Weltenburg there are pinks and other rock flowers ... and at Kelheim, climbing to the Befreiungshalle, I found a herbaceous clematis with flowers like flammula, or erecta, and with glaucous leaves. The river-banks are mostly devoid of flowers, but on a shingly beach below Ratisbon, where we camped, I noticed a yellow sedum and a dwarf phlox, not in flower. Lower down, when getting near the hills, there were large patches of pink coronilla and a pale yellow mullen, also willow-herb and a white cruciferous plant.

“The high, woody hills below Passau are almost entirely covered with beech and pine, but round the houses near the river are walnuts, plums, cherry, and other trees. On the rocks grows a genista with slender twigs and a spike of yellow blossoms, and there are patches of evening-primroses in the more open places. Though vines, hops, and other tender crops grow well, the flora has quite a subalpine character, and the houses are often like Swiss chalets.

“In the woods behind our camp, opposite Rannariedl, I noticed pyrola, hepatica, lady-fern, and oak and beech fern, Spiræa aruncus, Solomon’s-seal, lactuca, and a fine campanula. In a meadow where we camped the next day were

Grein, from the Camp. July 6, 1891

herbaceous clematis and lychnis with drooping white flowers and a berry-like seed-pod, Anthericum ramosum and loosestrife.

“By our camp at the mouth of the Traun (July 6th), I noticed purple and yellow loosestrife, meadowsweet, meadow-rue, white convolvulus, and the same flowers generally that grow by English rivers. Sea-buckthorn grew among the willows. By wood opposite Grein saw cyclamen, pyrola, hepatica, and various ferns, and monk’s-hood just below.”

A light rain, which began while we were in camp opposite the restored Castle of Rannariedl, continued during the whole day we were passing through the gorge, and, although we got a fair notion of the beauties of the scenery, we deplored the absence of sunshine more for esthetic reasons than for demands of personal comfort. We were cheered a good bit by a jolly luncheon at the little mountain village of Obermühl, and while the lowering clouds were still sweeping across the summits, and ragged patches of vapor were trailing along the mountain flanks, we paddled out of the gorge and past the town of Aschach, where we were diverted by the difficulty of dodging a curious ferry, which, as we floated down, seemed to blockade the river by an impassable line of great flat-boats chained closely together. The uppermost boat of the line we soon found to be moored in mid-stream a goodly distance above the town, while to the lowermost one was attached a great double-decked ferry-boat which, by ready adjustment of the angle of its side to the current, was forced across the river by the rush of the water in exactly the same way that a vessel is propelled at right angles to the wind. The net-work of side streams and lagoons between Aschach and Ottensheim, just above Linz, a distance of ten miles or more, is simplified to the boatman by a line of fine stone dikes on either bank, which confine the current to a comparatively straight and narrow channel, and we passed this tangle, which appeared on the map to be very difficult of navigation, almost without knowing it, certainly without recognizing any resemblance to our chart. A narrow chain of hills concealed Linz from our view until after Ottensheim was passed, and the sight of an ordinary four-wheeled cab, with the usual rawboned horse and red-faced driver, crawling along the level river-side road, was the first hint we received of the flourishing, modernized, and somewhat commonplace character of the prosperous city.

The rain still continued, and after a brief pause at Linz we paddled on in search of a camp. The shores were marshy and uninviting, and as the gray twilight deepened our prospects were far from encouraging. The light had almost gone from the sky before the camp finder turned the bow of his canoe across the stream in the direction of what appeared to be a backwater with a pleasant grassy bank in the shelter of a wood. With our eyes fixed on this goal we were paddling hard to stem the current which threatened to sweep us past the chosen spot, when we suddenly shot from the turbid flood of the main stream into the crystal-clear water of the Traun, at the mouth of which we had fortunately selected our camp-ground. We had become accustomed to the rain by this time, and as we were snug and dry when once inside our tents, we were more or less indifferent to the weather in camp. The next morning as we were cosily cooking our breakfast in the shelter of the great sketching umbrellas, a line of lumber rafts surged past the camp, scarcely a yard from the bushes on the bank, the raftsmen giving us a cheerful greeting as they went along. We were anxious to continue the acquaintance, but made no haste to follow them, because, in our ignorance of the rapidity of the current, we fancied we could easily overtake them. When we paddled out into the stream a few minutes later, not an

PUMP AT PÖCHLARN

object was in sight on the broad surface of the Danube except a hideous, puffing tow-boat, which left a trail of black smoke behind it, and churned the river into a sea of vicious waves. As it turned out, we never once overtook the rafts while they were drifting down-stream. We passed them several times after they had tied up to the bank for the night, and they as often floated along near our camp in the morning while we were still at our toilets or at breakfast. We learned to know all the raftsmen by sight, but never succeeded in spending a moment in their company until we happened to land at the same village, their last station above Vienna, and within sight of that city.

After leaving Linz we began to look forward to the great bugbears of this part of the river, the Greiner Schwall, the Strudel, and the Wirbel, famous rapids and whirlpools whose very names are sufficient to strike dismay to the heart of the boatman, and bring confusion to the mind of the philologist. Friends of ours who had more than once made the trip from Donaueschingen to Vienna had given us dramatic descriptions of the terrors of this passage, and the oldest cruiser of them all had confessed that he had never ventured to run these rapids, but had always intrusted himself and his canoe to a native flat-boat. The long-shore people wherever we had stopped for the last day or two had volunteered warnings of the dangers that were awaiting us, and we made an unusually early camp the day we left the Traun in a delightful spot opposite Grein, so as to be prepared to take our chances with the river monster in the early morning. Accordingly, after storing our traps with unusual care, and diligently studying the map, we boldly paddled forth bright and early the next day, and rapidly approached the gorge just below the town. As we came near we saw before us a narrow chasm, scarcely a hundred feet wide, where the river forces its way between precipitous cliffs on the one hand and a lofty, rocky island on the other, with piled up ruins of old castles frowning from the crag on either side. We had no time to hesitate, and no power to stop the onward rush of the canoes, and were in the surging sea of yellow billows before we realized it. The canoes behaved like a charm, shipping not a teaspoonful of water, and riding the waves like water-fowl. So far as our experience went, we were unable to distinguish the Greiner Schwall, the Strudel, and the Wirbel apart, for they seemed like one long rapid. Half-way down, finding that the canoes kept their course with very little guidance, we whipped out our sketch-books and made hasty notes of the scenery in a spirit of bravado which might easily have had unpleasant results.

Long, straight reaches between wild hills carried us to Ybbs—the old Roman Pons Isidis—at the mouth of the river of the same name, and thence to Pöchlarn where we landed for our mid-day meal at a river-side inn with pretty waitresses who made our stay a joy, and on our departure decorated our coats with nosegays in souvenir of our visit. It was at Pöchlarn that Kriemhild, on her journey to Hungary, was so brilliantly entertained by Rüdiger, one of the heroes of the “Niebelungenlied.” Our experience proves that the traditional hospitality of the time has lost none of its charm in the lapses of many centuries.

It was but a short run from here to the heavily-wooded heights where the Benedictine monastery of Melk dominates the surrounding landscape with its magnificent pile of buildings, the most imposing edifice along the whole course of the Danube, and celebrated in song and story since its foundation in the eleventh century. From its grand terrace the full majesty of the river is disclosed to view, as the broad, shining sheet of water extends from the plain far beyond Pöchlarn to the shadowy reaches of the pass below,

The Benedictine Monastery. Melk.

where it forces its way between rugged heights, serrated with huge crags and castle ruins. There is no grander and no more romantic stretch of the river above Vienna than the few miles below Melk, for the summits are higher and bolder in outline and the rocks more wild and savage in character than in any other gorge. Ruins of old robber castles are perched upon every dizzy pinnacle, deep ravines with tumbling streams score the mountain-sides, and great walls of jagged rock rise above the dark foliage, often forming impassable barriers along the steep declivities. A whirling current carried us all too quickly through this enchantingly beautiful reach, and when at sunset we saw the great ruin of Dürrenstein lift its noble towers against the violet-colored sky, we chose a camp on the opposite bank and watched the last golden gleam of warm sunlight fade from its shattered battlements.

CHAPTER VII

HE harmonizing mists of early morning silvered the tawny surface of the Danube, and softened the jagged outlines of Dürrenstein, on the crowning pinnacle of the rocky spur which thrusts its shoulder boldly out from the wooded flanks of higher summits behind, and stands sentinel over the little village at its base, and the sunny hill-side vineyards and valley beyond. Our camp, in a little glade by a backwater nearly opposite the ruin, was so peaceful and quiet that something of the repose of the place crept over our restless spirits, and, for the first time since we began to coquet with the nervous currents of the whirling stream, we felt a keen desire to pause in our onward rush, an ambition to extend our horizon, to climb above the river-bank, to explore the gorges that fascinated us with their mysterious gloom, to linger yet a while in the great defile where every peak bears the ruins of a noble castle, and every hamlet has a history crowded with tales of minstrelsy and chivalry, and enriched by familiar legends and interesting traditions. Our eyes, keen to observe vigorous outlines of mountain forms, had discovered in this defile the most impressive landscapes the river had yet unfolded before us, and it was with a sense of proper dramatic climax that we found that Dürrenstein—the very name of which set free a flood of childish memories of Cœur de Lion, of Blondel, of ladies fair and chivalrous knights, of robbery and ransom—was the very outpost of the chain of ruins which had serrated the skyline through the whole defile, and looked down upon the gem of all the river reaches. I may as well confess that my idea of the geographical situation of the castle had hitherto been in the region of hazy uncertainty, if not actually in the humiliating penumbra of utter ignorance. Its position, then, had the added charms of surprise and novelty.

EARLY MORNING OPPOSITE DÜRRENSTEIN

The towers and arches, high on the bare summit of the rock; the half-ruined walls, skirting each projecting spur, and straggling away down the steep, rough declivity, embracing with diverging ramparts and frequent projecting towers the little town on the ledge by the river below, with its castle, its Gothic church edifice, disfigured by utilitarian restoration, and defiled by stores of grain, and confining within the mediæval limits the quaint and crowded jumble of shops and dwellings—the charm of this unique situation, and the vivid memory of the traditions connected with the spot, were stronger even than the wily arguments of the beautiful effects on the river, and the fascinations of the exhilarating, throbbing current that, in spite of paddle, almost swept us past the landing we had chosen. But we conquered both the water and the impulse bred of its restless power, and clambered, broad-chested and full of pride at our victory, up a narrow cañon, with dark, frowning rocks overhead, shale and shingle underfoot, and the refreshing, half-forgotten odors of pine and warm, dry earth in our nostrils. Some distance up the gorge a steep, slippery grass slope extends upward between two rough pine-clad crests to a little depression in the ridge behind the ruin, and to the lower gate of the castle itself. Multicolored butterflies hovered in the sunlight, the grass and rock crevices were gay with flowers, and our botanist gathered, as we went, wild pinks, columbine, and anemone, and panted out to our eager ears the Latin names of scores of mountain plants. Our steps, retarded by these botanical delights, not to say delayed by the unaccustomed exercise, and our lungs expanding with a vigor unknown in the lazy life in the canoes, we were long in reaching the first point from which we could look down upon the wonderful panorama of mountain and river, valley and scattered towns. Our world had indeed been too narrow, our horizon much too low. The giantess of a river from whose tyranny we had just escaped lay like a shining narrow lake below us, its beautiful curves contrasting with the harsh lines of the mountains, which met in an apparently impenetrable wall beyond. From the height at which we stood we could not see its eddies nor hear the hiss of its rapid flow. We were for the moment quite beyond the power of its spell.

The castle ruin bears so many traces of the destruction of successive sieges and consequent restorations that as it now stands it makes an architectural and archæological puzzle which we felt quite unable to struggle with. In general plan it is not unlike other mediæval strongholds, with yard and keep, watch-towers and gates, banquet-hall and chapel, and with extensive outworks intended to protect the little town of Dürrenstein, at once its weakness and its strength. Utterly neglected by the owner, whoever he may be, the perfection of its masonry and the wonderful quality of the mortar have alone prevented it from becoming long since an ugly mass of worthless rubbish. Most of the later constructions have, indeed, fallen down, or have served so long as convenient quarries that they have almost disappeared. We did not find without some difficulty the traces of the grand old stairway that led from the lower enclosure on the town side up into the pile of buildings at the top and the older part of the castle. Scrambling up a moraine of small stones and mortar, an unsightly avalanche, where the noble flight of steps once mounted the ledge, we came to an irregular open space, now roofless, but with doorways almost perfect and well-preserved window penetrations. From this passages lead into towers on the edge of the precipice, and into a small vaulted chapel, where rows of Byzantine saints cover the walls with dim visions of red and yellow, their halos now but circlets of rough holes where jewels were once embedded in the mortar, and their rigid countenances disfigured by the weathering of centuries of storms and frosts that have fought nature’s battle on this bleak and dizzy crag. The northern wall of the open space just alluded to is a solid ledge of rock hewn square and true, and in this wall is an opening like a doorway, but bearing no traces of hinges or of any other contrivance to close it, which leads into a spacious room cut out of the hard stone. If this was the place where Richard Cœur de Lion was confined, not only could no minstrel song ever have reached his ears, but no sound of the world outside the castle less startling than the crash of thunder ever have broken the hateful quiet of this rock dungeon. The summit of the ledge is reached by a narrow stairway, casually twisting and turning as the inequalities of the surface dictated to the builder, and bears traces of a much-worn passageway and of huge floor-beams. This was once enclosed by walls of great height and exceptional solidity. From the ordinary indications of construction it is proper to assume that here was the original building, enlarged and altered a good deal since the twelfth century, but still preserving much of its old shape. Portions of huge towers and jagged edges of apartment walls, where immense pieces were blown out and down into the chasm below when the Swedes destroyed this stronghold in the Thirty Years’ War, now alone remain to give a meagre idea of its grandeur and unique strength. Unapproachable except across the narrow depressed ridge behind the summit, and this entrance defended by overhanging towers and a series of walls, it withstood many sieges, and no doubt harbored many a robber baron whose descendants now enjoy the titles and wealth which throw a dazzling glamour over the methods of their acquisition.

For a long time we enjoyed to the full the view up the defile and down the broad valley where the river, spreading out into a net-work of small streams, disappears in a screen

DÜRRENSTEIN

of wooded islands. Away to the south-east the great Benedictine monastery of Göttweig shows an imposing mass of white on the rounded hills that bound the Tullnfeld, and stretch off to mingle their summits with the broad, dark patch of the Wienerwald in the extreme distance. Far beyond the low islands lies Tulln, one of the oldest towns on the Danube, the Comagenæ of the Romans, referred to in the “Niebelungenlied” as an important place, and of historical interest as the point where the great army assembled in 1683 to deliver Vienna from the hands of the hated Turk. Dotted along the hill-sides and in the broad valley on the left bank of the river are many prosperous little towns.

The insidious influence of the guide-book stole upon us unawares as we began to ponder over the history of the region within the range of our uninterrupted vision. Our imaginations, stimulated now by the mention of these names, wandered from the realities of the Napoleonic campaigns, through the dim traditions of crusading days, back to the times when the Roman fleets crowded the narrow channels at the busy stations on the river-bank. The germ of latent restlessness thus grew like a noxious fungus in our minds; contentment and peace vanished like a faint odor. This history was but stale, and the study of it unprofitable. Myths and legends were like poetry and music, to be taken only when the spirit yearns for them. Reality is now before us; teeming modern life awaits us beyond those distant hills. A new nervousness and a new ambition of progress are upon us—new because there opened to our mental vision, at the mention of Islam, broad and fascinating vistas of the Orient, of strange lands and stranger peoples, of types new to our pencils, of colors to tempt the strongest tints on our palettes.

Vienna, hidden from us by the dark mass of the Wienerwald, is, for us at least, the last station before that mysterious East towards which the resistless current rushes below us, and whither our impatient canoes shall carry us through bewitching plains of Hungary, wild Carpathian gorges, and savage regions of Servia, Bulgaria, Roumania, and Russia, to the shores of the Black Sea. What a force the very mention of these names has upon us, and how we chafe at a moment’s delay! Castles and churches will keep, but what of that great mysterious land beyond those distant hills? Railroads have scarred the fertile plains, and have made the remote valleys and mountain gorges hideous with iron and raw stone. Customs have changed and costumes have disappeared. Even the Turk, so long the master of the lower Danube, has now sullenly withdrawn to the Bosporus and the Dardanelles. We must get on, for in our impatience it seems as if these changes are but the work of a day, not of a generation, and unless we hasten we shall be too late.

FROM DÜRRENSTEIN TO BUDAPEST

Many and many a time had we roundly cursed the canalization of the river which gave us for a water-line only the dull angle of a stone dike. But after leaving the village of Dürrenstein, which at the last moment we found, to our surprise, to be a favorite resort of Viennese artists, and after a brief pause for luncheon at Stein, with its obnoxious river improvements, we found ourselves very glad to follow the stone dikes through the maze of channels, and later in the day to utilize the stone-work in a way we had never anticipated. We were swept along by a current so rapid that our pace permitted no hesitation in the choice of route among the monotonous willow islands. Through openings in the trees along the bank we occasionally saw pleasant villas and clusters of houses reflected in the glassy lagoons, and here and there a sportsman in search of wild-fowl paddled along behind the dike. Sudden wind and rain squalls swept across the river in the late afternoon, rudely interrupting our sentimental meditations, and approaching darkness forced us at last to land. Under the friendly lee of bushes growing in the crevices of the masonry embankment we at last succeeded in checking our too willing canoes, and drew them up reluctantly, and only after it was evident that we had to choose between the ragged platform of the dike and the sodden swamps which extended for miles away from the main stream. It must be understood, by-the-way, that the embankments follow the large curves of the main channel, not forming a continuous dike like that along a canal or a polder, but leaving here and there an opening where the stiller water from the artificial lagoons joins the flowing stream. In these side branches or lagoons the water is frequently clear and pellucid, and in them, indeed, we found the first and only “blue Danube” we had seen from the start. Our visions of the sunny East had been forgotten in the struggle with the violent squalls and at the prospect of a night on the water, and as we hauled the canoes up on the firm stone-work of the dike and explored the snail-infested morass behind it, we accepted the unæsthetic situation on the well-drained platform, and were even grateful to the engineers who had spoiled the river for sketching, but had improved it, at this point at least, for camping purposes. In the alder swamp behind our camp a great gushing spring of clean Danube water, filtering through the dike, abundantly supplied this the most desirable luxury of a bivouac. There is more than one compensation, we thought, for this annoying desecration of the river scenery.

LUMBER RAFT

With the brilliant sunshine and drying air of the next morning returned the eager anticipations of the day before. The river was full of life. Great flat-boats and rafts, old friends from the river Traun, drifted past us as we prepared to start. The raftsmen laboring at the great sweeps gave us the morning greetings with a true ring of hearty and honest good-will, and shouted “Auf baldiges Wiedersehen” as they swung along down the reach. We had long since learned that the old adage that the race is not always to the swift might be as well illustrated by the active canoe and the cumbersome raft as by the hare and the tortoise, and we knew that while we were giving our boats their morning toilet the rafts would be surging along at the rate of three or four miles an hour, and would reach their destination near Vienna long before we should.

Tulln, seldom visited by the traveller on account of the superior attractions of Vienna, has more than one relic which repays careful examination and study. Adjoining the much-restored church stands a small decagonal Byzantine baptistery, with circular interior not over twenty feet in diameter. An Early Gothic doorway grafted on the original edifice, and a complete restoration of the whole as late as 1873, have not essentially altered its general appearance, for the naïve irregularity of its plan, the noble proportion of its sides, and the purity of its characteristic ornamentation survive all the eccentricities of ancient as well as modern tinkering. The great church has been distorted by successive additions and rebuildings during several centuries, and little remains of its original Byzantine dignity. As for the little dull town itself, the name, familiar to us in poetry as well as in the recorded events of history, is the chief proof to the casual observer that it is one of the oldest, and was for a long time one of the most important, towns on the Danube. Many of the houses are probably built out of material quarried from the ancient palaces and fine old mediæval churches which, ruined in the severe sieges and conflagrations, had yielded up the treasures of stone and marble which the wanton destruction of Roman temples had contributed to their erection. Little of the spirit of that ancient architecture has survived the change and destruction, for modern Tulln is as plain and meagre of invention as stone and mortar can make it. Of all the great Roman buildings which once stood here, a single broken altar, moss-grown and neglected, in the shadow of the baptistery, remains as a monument to the early splendor of this provincial town. By what chance it has escaped the stone-mason’s hammer no one can tell. Perhaps the delicate lines of its mouldings and the grace of its shattered figures may have secured it a place among the paraphernalia of the Byzantine church, and thus it had lost its identity as a relic of heathen worship. Would that the mute eloquence of its pathetic beauty had the voice of a brazen trumpet to denounce the modern restorer, whose touch is death to the charms of all art!

The commonplace aspect of the river-front let us down gently to the ugliness of the railway bridge, which stretches its rigid arm across the fine reach of the river just below Tulln, and screens with its hideous framework the beauties of the landscape below. The up-river navigation became hideously mechanical as well. Puffing, crawling, wheelless steamers groaned and clanked as they pulled their ugly black hulks against the current by a long chain lying in the bed of the stream. Huge iron barges, the most helpless of monsters without the partnership of a tug, added their shapeless masses to the procession of mechanical freaks that indicated the proximity of a large manufacturing city. Distracted by these new dangers to our navigation, and by the vigorous opposition of a strong head-wind, we had scarcely time to notice the great vine-clad hill which crowds the river on the right bank, and shelters under its towering declivity the extensive Augustinian abbey of Klosterneuberg, before we found ourselves slipping along a high stone-faced quay, and saw in the smoky distance the great rotunda on the Prater in Vienna, and the straight lines of the numerous railway bridges there. In the little village of Kahlenbergerdorf our waterman instincts led us to a humble inn, where we found, to our delight, all the raftsmen we had been meeting since the camp at the mouth of the Traun, assembled for their mid-day meal, and for a final friendly glass before returning up-river to start again on another downward voyage. We needed not to know their names; they did not even ask us ours, nor desire to learn about our customary occupation; the masonic bonds of kindred experiences and similar trials and dangers of the long journey made us friends without further introduction. They were old water-rats, they said, and though we could claim to be but the tiniest mice of aquatic tastes, our parting with them in the flickering shadows of the garden, surrounded by brigades of beer-glasses, was tinged with a genuine regret that we should no longer hear their cheery voices of a morning, nor see their honest faces again.

CHAPTER VIII

IENNA offers an unsightly water-front to the Danube navigator. A succession of huge passenger and railway bridges span the river, and but for the constant busy traffic seen upon them would appear unnecessarily numerous in full proportion to their ugliness. At one end they touch the marshy, desolate shores of the great plain of the Marschfeld, which stretches away to Hainburg and Theben at the Hungarian frontier, and at the other their solid piers and embankments either stand isolated on waste ground, or are supported by ragged and scattered settlements along the bank, with here and there a huge manufactory. From the level of the water a broad veil of smoke rising above the trees is the only visible indication of the proximity of the great city, except it be the bridges themselves and the numerous tow-boats and excursion steamers. The city lies in a semicircular valley between the hills of the Wienerwald and the Danube on both sides of the little river Wien, which drains the hills to the west and empties its muddy flood into the Danube three or four miles below the city. The northern angle of this little stream, in the very heart of Vienna, is connected by a canal with the Danube at some distance above the town, and the Wien has been canalized and enlarged from its junction with the canal to its mouth, so that there is a practicable waterway through the town. The large Danube passenger boats cannot enter the canal, however, but are waited upon by small steamers which connect with them at the mouth of the Wien. The great park, the Prater, where the International Exhibition of 1873 was held, and a broad flat of rough land adjoining, separate the city from the broad Danube, which, with wonderfully rapid current, rushes off to the east towards the distant hills which mark the Hungarian frontier.

A LITTLE GIRL OF HAINBURG

Vienna was originally a Celtic settlement called Vindobona, which the Romans seized in the second decade of this era and made into a military post. From the end of the Roman occupation at the close of the sixth century until the beginning of the eleventh century, the town practically disappeared from history. During the Crusades, however, it increased in size and wealth with great rapidity, and since that time has frequently been the scene of important historical events, not only in the wars with the Mahometans, but in more recent times. The Marschfeld, close at hand, has been a favorite tilting ground for hostile nations from earliest history down to the Napoleonic campaign, when the battles of Aspern and Wagram were fought here. Vienna has its share of stock sights—the beautiful Cathedral of St. Stephen, numerous historical buildings, including the little house where Richard Cœur de Lion was captured, seldom visited by travellers; extensive and monumental public edifices; immense collections of historical relics; superb galleries of works of art, ancient and modern, and places of entertainment and amusement more numerous in proportion to its population than in any other city in Europe. Its citizens comprise a score of nationalities, most of whom represent distinct and important elements in the composition of the empire.

The casual traveller will notice first in Vienna the great speed of the cabs and the skill of the drivers, the wonderfully adorned dray-horses, the prevalence of the kerchief as a head-covering among the women, the shop signs in a dozen languages, the perfect system of tram-ways and omnibuses, and the sudden contrast between the broad and spacious thoroughfares outside the fine boulevards, the Ring Strasse, and the old town within this limit. Even more than Paris, Vienna is essentially a city of apartment-houses and restaurants. These have always been distinct features of Viennese life, and the great rage for building which culminated in the panic at the time of the International Exhibition was induced by the popularity of new apartment-houses which seemed to foretell a great demand for them during the exhibition and later. In consequence of this fever for building, numberless immense caravansaries of apartment-houses were erected in all the new quarters, and the advantages of cheapness and comfort offered by these houses have effectually stifled any tendency among the people of the middle class towards separate residences. One peculiarity of the apartment system in Vienna is the long-established custom of closing the main door at ten o’clock in the evening. After that hour the concierge has the right to collect ten kreutzers (5 cents) from every occupant or visitor who enters the door. He seldom or never waives this privilege. How long this relic of social life of the Middle Ages will last is a much discussed question in Vienna itself.

PEASANT WAGON, HAINBURG

Acquaintance with the common people in Vienna is made difficult by the atrocious dialect of German they speak there. The popular resorts of the artisan classes, with their musical and theatrical entertainments by local performers of talent, are always amusing, but the wit and humor of the programme is entirely lost to any one who is unfamiliar with the patois. The prevalence of the harsh sound of the letter “X” is one of the most noticeable features of this patois, and a story is told which illustrates the use of this sound and also the manner in which the adopted citizens of the town acquire the common speech. A Hungarian was overheard giving a compatriot assistance in German, and in the course of his lesson he said: “You’ll have to learn a new letter before you can speak German as well as I do. For example, when you drink a glass of beer in a party you must say ‘Xundheit! (Gesundheit) an die ganz’ ‘Xellschaft! (Gesellschaft).’” The Viennese are famous for their keen enjoyment and appreciation of humor, a reputation which is borne out by the popular support given to numberless comic papers, profusely illustrated, and all of them full of local hits. The life of the people is best seen on a holiday in the Wurstel Prater, a sort of Viennese Coney Island, or Crystal Palace, where all sorts of out-of-door entertainments are in progress. Here may be studied the characteristic costumes of many nationalities and of many districts, and a more interesting collection of types cannot be found in Europe. The environs of Vienna are particularly attractive. The great formal park and palace of Schönbrunn and of Laxenburg, the rural beauties of Kahlenberg, and the charms of the vine-growing district along the southern slopes of the hills near the town, all attract crowds of merrymakers on every pleasant holiday.

We did not attempt to enter the Danube canal with our canoes, but paddled down to the boat-house of the Lia Ruder Verein near the third great bridge over the main stream. Here we found a delegation of the club to welcome us, for our probable arrival had been announced to them, and the whole establishment was put at once at our disposal. Our canoes found shelter and healing varnish for their wounds and were stored in the company of forty-eight racing boats, from the eight-oar to the single-scull, while we were carried off bodily by the members of the club and comfortably installed in a hotel. The inexhaustible hospitality and cheery companionship of the members of the Lia Ruder Verein would never tire our muse were we to start the song agoing. This hospitality, not only general, but particular and special, so gilded our stay in the city that the bitterness of parting from Danube and canoes gave but a flavor to the joys of congenial society. One perfect summer morning we saw the last of the club-house as we shot the railway bridge and cast a hasty glance past the bellying mizzen of the bounding canoe. No less absorbing feeling than the glorious sense of freedom and irresponsibility as we found ourselves again on the river would have excused to our consciences the joy we felt at leaving Vienna. But the memory of its kindness and courtesy has survived all ephemeral sentiments.

A HUNGARIAN FERRY