It was on Saturday, June 27th, at about five o’clock in the afternoon
that we left Ulm, and the following day about noon we reached Lauingen,
having spent most of the forenoon in camp rigging our sails, properly
adjusting the tents, and doing a hundred other odd jobs which the
ownership of every boat entails. The Admiral, who had preceded the rest
of the fleet by an hour or more, was in the centre of an interested
group of natives when we hauled alongside at the landing, and all
Lauingen in its Sunday best was lounging near by, happy in the
entertainment which the arrival of the strange craft offered. The old
town walls are half hidden by excrescences of modern construction which
cling to them for their whole extent, sheltering a notable proportion of
the inhabitants. With this exception the place is not materially changed
since the sixteenth century, and still has to a very remarkable degree
the character of an old Dutch town both in details of construction and
in the general character of the domestic architecture. Most of the large
buildings are warehouses and residences combined, and there are few
front doors which are not provided with a little side window or squint
set in at an angle so that the street can be seen without opening the
door. All distinctive costume has been modernized out of the place. The
people look cheerful, active, and prosperous to a degree unusual in such
a remote town, and we were fain to believe that this vitality was due
to the leaven of those of the inhabitants who had been to America, not a
few of whom greeted us with an exaggerated Hoboken dialect. But the
modern spirit has not obliterated all the queer old customs, and Sunday
was busy with parades of turnvereins and sporting clubs with all the
pageantry common to the ancient guilds. In the midst of the festivities
a stately carriage drove into the market-place where the statue of
Albertus Magnus, the famous scholar of the thirteenth century, was
erected ten years ago in the shadow of the great tower with its sixteen
stories. It was a wonderful old vehicle, with broad leathern springs and
great hood, a huge rack behind piled high with luggage, a seat in front
occupied by a servant--a buxom country girl--and with a long pole like a
single shaft, to which one horse was attached in a sort of casual
fashion by a harness of the most antiquated and peculiar pattern. Under
the hood sat a young man who held the lines and guided the horse across
the square towards the inn, while the servant-girl, with folded arms,
occasionally nodded and smiled at friends in the multitude. We fancied
this must be some local dignitary, such was the grandeur and stateliness
of the turnout, but we found on inquiry that it was only a conveyance
from a neighboring town bringing a commercial traveller with his packs.
Truly, even this much-derided occupation has its agreeable features in
Bavaria.
It was an exceedingly hot day, and the river for the next dozen miles or
so was not very interesting, as its channel had been confined between
dike-like banks through a great steaming marsh. Every two hundred metres
of the distance is marked by a numbered post, and from our low position
these were often the most prominent objects in view. The hissing of the
water, which began at the confluence of the Iller, was always plainly
heard, but the water was so muddy that we could not discover whether or
not the cause of the sound was, as it is said to be, the rolling of
pebbles on the river-bed. The reaction from our brief but busy visit to
Lauingen put us in rather a quiet frame of mind. The drowsy heat was not
stimulating to the ambition for sight-seeing, and we scarcely looked at
the hills where the battle-fields of Höchstädt and Blenheim are located,
they were so far away from the river and the events seemed so very long
ago. We had more interest, moreover, in the near foreground with its
occasional clusters of brilliant bloom. Alfred Parsons says of this
region: “For a long way above and below Ulm the banks are lined with
small willows and coarse grasses; occasional bunches of forget-me-not
and some iris and valerian are the only flowers. On a hill-side near
Donauwörth I saw bright pink dog-roses, campanulas, geranium, veronica,
epipactis, Turk’s-cap lilies, pink coronilla, which is abundant, and a
tall white composite with groups of daisy-like flowers and a leaf like
the tansy; also a white erigeron.”
[Illustration: _The Bell tower_
_Lauingen._]
The glorious, lazy afternoon was well on the wane when we came to
Donauwörth, a blaze of richly-colored roofs and lichen-stained walls and
with an enchanting skyline of gables and towers. We left it with
reluctance before we had seen half of its beauties. The restlessness of
the Danube had begun to eat into our souls and, without our knowing it,
had created in us a new appetite--a craving for constant motion.
[Illustration: Donauwörth.]
Not far below Donauwörth the Lech contributes its pale-green waters,
flowing northerly from the water-shed of the distant Alps beyond Lake
Constance, and it brought down to us for our entertainment several rafts
with cheery river folk, and we began the next day in their company. They
ran ashore at the upper end of the town of Neuburg, where the Danube is
crossed by a large stone bridge, and we stopped there as well. Finding,
however, that we were uncomfortably far from the centre of the town, we
soon paddled off again, shot the seething rapids under the bridge and,
hurried along by the current, landed after some difficulty and serious
bumping against the perpendicular stone wall, at a broad flight of
stone steps opposite a cheerful-looking hotel with a formal row of
standard roses all along in front, tied to neatly-painted sticks
surmounted by gilded balls. We had already gone ashore when our
attention was called to our canoes by the excited shouts of the crowd
hanging over the stone parapet. To our horror we saw one of the long
rafts swinging down under the bridge with irresistible momentum directly
upon our canoes, and the raftsmen making frantic gestures at us. We
understood that in order to check the raft they were obliged to beach
her in the shallow water near the steps, and, indeed, she was headed for
that point, and no human power could stop her. For a moment it seemed as
if our canoes must be ground to splinters, but we rushed down and
promptly dragged them a few yards up-stream, utilizing the noisome mouth
of a sewer for a harbor for one, and lifting the others bodily out upon
a narrow ledge of broken rock. Then, dashing into the water, we put all
our strength against the raft and she ground along within a foot of our
precious boats, and we were saved from our friends.
It took an unusual quantity of beer to cool us off after this exertion,
and our afternoon cruise was not further remarkable except for the sight
of various immense ferry-boats swinging across the stream attached to
wire guys and bearing two great loads of hay, cattle and all, and for a
visit to Ingolstadt, a military post of great importance and
correspondingly unattractive aspect. We camped that night on the
beautiful point of a low meadow where our shadows fell in long lines
towards the neighboring town of Vohburg, almost too picturesque to be
real, and were promptly and unwillingly introduced to our first Danube
mosquitoes, who kept us diverted if not very much amused during dinner,
and until we had crawled into our curtained berths and let them buzz and
pipe in futile rage against the impenetrable gauze.
[Illustration: THE FERRY]
Vohburg is said to be the most virtuous town in Bavaria, the reward of
virtue there being a dowry of 50 guldens ($25) to each maiden of
unblemished reputation when she takes the marriage vows. One of the
notable results of this bounty is the encouragement of intermarriage,
for the youths are of frugal dispositions, and fifty guldens are fifty
guldens here quite as much as anywhere. Our first visitors the next
morning were the storks of the town who solemnly sought the early worm
and the casual frog, and they took flight at the approach of a troop of
the ugliest children to be found where the German language is heard--and
that is saying a great deal. They stood a long time in a circle around
our camp, either too much astonished or too stupid to reply to our
volley of questions. We couldn’t help thinking, as we looked at their
unintelligent faces, that it would be much better for the race if the
dowry fund should be embezzled by the town-clerk and vice rule
triumphant for a while. Our curiosity was not satisfied by this slight
glimpse of the inhabitants of Vohburg, and besides, the ancient town
gates, the massive ruins of the burgh--which was destroyed, like
everything else about here, by the Swiss in 1641--and the old
church-tower, stuck full of great stone cannon balls, tempted us to
land. Possibly the impression gained from a brief visit was not a just
one, but although we found the architecture interesting and the people
friendly and courteous, we could distinguish nothing of the charm which
our imaginations had pictured to us as the result of generations of
prosperity, peace, and domestic virtue.
The Danube is never really monotonous, for, apart from the ever-changing
landscape, the life on the bank offers endless interest to the observer.
We had drifted for a couple of days through a broad, flat country, and
never had experienced a dull moment. Although we were not impatient for
a change of scenery, we began to look forward with pleasant
anticipations, soon after leaving Vohburg, to the chain of hills that
formed the horizon to the east and north, promising narrow gorges and
rapid water. Except for our increasing eagerness for progress as the
hills began to take definite shape in detail towards the middle of the
forenoon, we should have undoubtedly landed at Eining, a little cluster
of houses on the right bank, near which are the remains of the great
Roman frontier station Abusina, which, from its topographical situation,
and also from its geographical position near the most northerly point of
the river’s course, was chosen as the chief outpost of the Danube
provinces against the German barbarians. This station was maintained
with two or three interruptions from its establishment in 15 B.C. until
the end of the fifth century. Across the river are distinctly visible
the outlines of Trajan’s wall, which extended from this point to
Wiesbaden on the Rhine. We were much interested by what we could see of
these remains, for we knew that to be but the first in the long series
of similar monuments along the Danube to the Roman occupation, which
never fail to excite the wonder of the traveller at the enterprise and
persistent courage of the great Roman general. Near at hand, too, is
Vergen of the “Niebelungenlied,” where King Gunther and his Niebelungen
crossed the Danube on their way to Budapest and the court of King
Attila. It was at this spot that Hagen tried to drown the priest of the
expedition because the water witches had predicted that the holy man
alone out of the 10,000 in the expedition should return safe to Worms.
The facts of history and the fascinating figments of tradition seemed to
draw for us across this smiling valley a frontier clearly defined in our
imaginations, beyond which limit we were to enter upon a new phase of
our journey.
[Illustration: FROM ULM TO STRAUBING]
The Benedictine abbey of Weltenburg, with its crenellated walls and
extensive façades, placed in exactly the right spot on the river-bank,
like the composition of the theatrical drop-curtain, stands at the head
of a narrow, rocky gorge, about four miles in length, more grand and
impressive than any on the river above. Weltenburg is an easy excursion
from Kelheim, and divides the attraction of the neighborhood with the
Befreiungshalle, or Hall of Liberation, near the latter place. Knowing
this fact, we were not surprised to find in the midst of the mournful
relics of past grandeur the liveliest kind of a beer-garden, with a
half-acre of tables under shade trees in the court-yard, and regiments
of stone mugs waiting to be filled at the convenient tap of
[Illustration: Between Weltenberg Er Kelheim.]
a great brewery in one of the monastery buildings. The clock struck
twelve as we entered the enclosure. Every one rose and uncovered his
head, and stood like the scattered supernumeraries on the operatic
stage. The peal of the organ in the adjacent church added to the
dramatic effect, and if the whole company had burst forth in a chorus we
would have been little surprised at it. The gorgeousness of the church
interior contrasts painfully with the poverty of the establishment, only
too plainly indicated by the
[Illustration: AN EARLY VISITOR]
ill-kept grounds and the general air of neglect on all sides.
Excursionists frequently take the short trip through the gorge in small
flat-boats rowed by women, and there is another monastery on the left
bank, half-way down, so there need be no more than thirty minutes
between jorums of beer, the important adjuncts of these trips. The
river, narrowed to one-third of its width above, winds between
perpendicular limestone cliffs so smooth that it has been necessary to
attach iron rings to the rock at intervals near the water’s edge for the
use of boatmen, and the women rowers often tie up their boats to these
rings to rest during the upward trip. The heavily-wooded hills
overhanging the left bank at the lower end of the gorge are crowned by
the Befreiungshalle, a huge, circular building in classical style, begun
by Lewis I. of Bavaria in 1852, and inaugurated on October 18, 1863, the
fiftieth anniversary of the battle of Leipsic. This monumental structure
is of imposing dimensions, the dome rising nearly 200 feet above the
great stone platform, reached by a noble flight of steps. On the
exterior the different provinces of Germany are represented by eighteen
colossal female figures, with corresponding trophies and candelabra, and
the interior, which is lined with polished marble of various colors, is
surrounded by white marble angels symbolical of victory, with tablets
bearing the names of famous German generals, bronze shields made from
captured French guns, and inscriptions celebrating various battles.
Landing at Kelheim we toiled up the steep hill in the hot sun, and then
cooled ourselves in the twilight of the interior, skating in felt
slippers over the mirror-like pavement, and listening to the remarkable
echoes which magnified the slightest sound into thunder. We were waylaid
on our descent from the hill by a garrulous ex-citizen of Brooklyn,
whose fulsome praise of Americans and everything American finally drove
us out of the cool shelter of a river-side beer-garden and into the
blistering cockpits of the canoes. We set forth with the vague intention
of passing the night somewhere above and near Ratisbon. Even before we
came in sight of the town we looked everywhere for a camp ground, but a
high-road on either side left not an acre of ground at the water’s edge
where we could land without becoming the focus of observation from a
dozen farm-houses. We therefore pushed on until sunset, and just as the
beautiful twin towers of Ratisbon cathedral loomed up across a wide open
valley to the east, we landed on a quiet meadow, carpeted with sweet
grass, and there we slept until the peasants trudging to market along
the bank in the early morning awoke us with their voices.