CHAPTER II

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 nomap 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-yardas 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 modifiedRob 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 theshore 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

Ourbatterie de cuisineconsisted 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 greatmany 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.

THE 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 shorttime 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 oncecaught 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 shootingNeidingen.

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]

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 makeour 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 thechefas 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 outcafé au laitof 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 ofthe 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 workhaymaking, 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 downCampanulaglomeratagrows 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, andAdiantum 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.

OUR 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 ofSpiræa 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 weeksat 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

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