CHAPTER VII

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 ramosumand 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 narrowchannel, 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 betweenprecipitous 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.

THE 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 outpostof 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 giantessof 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 countenancesdisfigured 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 riverimprovements, 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.

VIENNA 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 steamerswhich 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 localhits. 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 consciencesthe joy we felt at leaving Vienna. But the memory of its kindness and courtesy has survived all ephemeral sentiments.

A HUNGARIAN FERRY

After a short half-day’s paddle down a tossing current, past scores of floating mills and along miles of stone embankments, we came to the point where the hills again close in from both sides and form a wall along the eastern horizon. Though less imposing than some other mountain ranges we had passed, and, indeed, very narrow where it touches the river, this is the barrier where for many centuries constant and successful resistance was kept up against the advance of the Mahometans. Here for a long time was the extreme eastern bulwark of Christendom, the advance outposts of the West; and here, after countless campaigns, the hereditary enemy suffered the crushing defeats which, a little over a century and a half ago, marked the beginning of the decline of his power in Europe. Thisgateway to the great Carpathian plain, and the political as well as geographical frontier of Hungary, is as perfect a natural rampart as could be imagined. At the very river’s edge rise, on either bank, high isolated hills, covered now with masses of ruins, but formerly part of a complete system of fortifications perfectly commanding the river from both sides. These fortifications enclosed, as the ruins now plainly show, the little town of Hainburg, on the right bank, and Theben, a few miles below on the other side of the river, the highest Danube town in the Hungarian kingdom.

THE WIENERTHOR, HAINBURG

The sentimental spirit generated in us on the occasion of the happy visit to Dürrenstein, though veiled a little by the distractions of Vienna, was now stimulated afresh as we landed in Hainburg. We had accidentally chosen it as a place for a few days’ quiet work, and found that we had stumbled unawares into a little walled town full of archæological and historical interest. Through an ancient arched gateway near the railway station, Blutgasse (blood lane) winds steeply up between crowded whitewashed houses to a broad open square,where a large church with intricately ugly copper-covered spire throws a shadow over rows of peasant women squatting on the pavement beside their baskets of market stuff, their blue dresses and bright kerchiefs adding an agreeable note of color to the blond tones of the surrounding architecture. Blutgasse! No stretch of the imagination is required to picture the carnage when the Turks, hunting the inoffensive citizens through the streets with fanatical ferocity, left only one alive to tell the tale. This narrow lane, offering a possible escape to the river, was piled high with headless corpses, and the blood ran in streams under the oaken gate into the turbid river, which washed the foundations of the town walls. Tradition says that the one survivor was a woman, who hid herself, with a small store of provisions, in a disused chimney, where for three days she listened to the horrid sounds of the massacre.

During the long centuries while history is silent this little town, with the neighboring region, has been the theatre of many another thrilling and dramatic episode now only faintly echoing in the murmur of tradition. On the whole length of this great water highway there has been no busier spot than this from the time when the goaded slaves first towed the ponderous Roman galleys against the rushing stream up to its docks until its complete destruction in the struggle against the Turks. Indeed, the whole neighboring country bears abundant witness to the importance of this point. Extensive Roman remains are scattered all over the fertile plateau a short distance above Hainburg, near the village of Deutsch-Altenburg and Petronell, where Carnuntum once stood. Military engineers, since the earliest mediæval days, have burned the shattered marbles for lime, and have built into hastily constructed defences tiles and mouldings, capitals and cornices; and in times of peace the local masons, with more deliberation and less excuse, have completed thework of destruction. Recent archæological explorations have uncovered the ruins of an amphitheatre, of villas and baths, and latterly a commendable local interest has been taken in these relics, a proof of which is the popularity of the little museum where are stored a multitude of objects of Roman origin. The farmers now point with pride to the crumbling ruins of the great triumphal arch, which they but recently considered an unsightly excrescence on the fair surface of a broad wheat-field, and speak of Carnuntum as familiarly as if its glories were but of recent date.

Back to Index Next