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 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
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: 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
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration]
“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.
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: 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:
[Illustration: 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.