The poplars of Passau came in sight early on the morning of the Fourth
of July, but we had no intention of celebrating the day, particularly as
one-third of our party took only a languid interest in the event.
Neither did we care to meet any more boating men, however agreeable they
might be, for, besides the consciousness of our false position, we had a
realizing sense of the value of our time, and almost begrudged the hours
spent at these boating entertainments. We avoided the rowing club at
Passau, and stole in behind a floating bath-house and hid our canoes
away there. This move did not save us, however, for as we were crossing
the bridge, two rowing men who had seen us come down-stream were on hand
to waylay us, and before we could enter a protest we were whisked off to
luncheon. The town is attractively situated on a high promontory at the
junction of the Inn and the Danube, and is, indeed, as far as natural
environments go, one of the most beautiful spots of the whole river. The
town itself, or at least as much of it as we were allowed by our friends
to examine, is full of interest, although not distinguished by any
remarkable monuments of art. The unruly Inn, which is always ready to
overflow at a moment’s notice, comes rushing into the Danube with a
dirty yellow, rubbish-strewn flood, and gives the larger river a sturdy
shouldering for a long distance down-stream. It is the contamination of
the Danube by the Inn that changes its color below Passau. Above this
town it is in ordinary seasons of a greenish color, and sometimes, in
the deep, shady pools, of an intense and beautiful blue; but the Danube
as we saw it from Villingen, near the source, to Vilkoff at its mouth,
was always of nearly the same monotonous, pale color of _café au lait_.
[Illustration: 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
[Illustration: Grein, from the Camp. July 6, 1891]
herbaceous clematis and lychnis with drooping white flowers and a
berry-like seed-pod, _Anthericum ramosum_ and loosestrife.
“By our camp at the mouth of the Traun (July 6th), I noticed purple and
yellow loosestrife, meadowsweet, meadow-rue, white convolvulus, and the
same flowers generally that grow by English rivers. Sea-buckthorn grew
among the willows. By wood opposite Grein saw cyclamen, pyrola,
hepatica, and various ferns, and monk’s-hood just below.”
A light rain, which began while we were in camp opposite the restored
Castle of Rannariedl, continued during the whole day we were passing
through the gorge, and, although we got a fair notion of the beauties of
the scenery, we deplored the absence of sunshine more for esthetic
reasons than for demands of personal comfort. We were cheered a good bit
by a jolly luncheon at the little mountain village of Obermühl, and
while the lowering clouds were still sweeping across the summits, and
ragged patches of vapor were trailing along the mountain flanks, we
paddled out of the gorge and past the town of Aschach, where we were
diverted by the difficulty of dodging a curious ferry, which, as we
floated down, seemed to blockade the river by an impassable line of
great flat-boats chained closely together. The uppermost boat of the
line we soon found to be moored in mid-stream a goodly distance above
the town, while to the lowermost one was attached a great double-decked
ferry-boat which, by ready adjustment of the angle of its side to the
current, was forced across the river by the rush of the water in exactly
the same way that a vessel is propelled at right angles to the wind. The
net-work of side streams and lagoons between Aschach and Ottensheim,
just above Linz, a distance of ten miles or more, is simplified to the
boatman by a line of fine stone dikes on either bank, which confine the
current to a comparatively straight and narrow channel, and we passed
this tangle, which appeared on the map to be very difficult of
navigation, almost without knowing it, certainly without recognizing any
resemblance to our chart. A narrow chain of hills concealed Linz from
our view until after Ottensheim was passed, and the sight of an ordinary
four-wheeled cab, with the usual rawboned horse and red-faced driver,
crawling along the level river-side road, was the first hint we received
of the flourishing, modernized, and somewhat commonplace character of
the prosperous city.
The rain still continued, and after a brief pause at Linz we paddled on
in search of a camp. The shores were marshy and uninviting, and as the
gray twilight deepened our prospects were far from encouraging. The
light had almost gone from the sky before the camp finder turned the bow
of his canoe across the stream in the direction of what appeared to be a
backwater with a pleasant grassy bank in the shelter of a wood. With our
eyes fixed on this goal we were paddling hard to stem the current which
threatened to sweep us past the chosen spot, when we suddenly shot from
the turbid flood of the main stream into the crystal-clear water of the
Traun, at the mouth of which we had fortunately selected our
camp-ground. We had become accustomed to the rain by this time, and as
we were snug and dry when once inside our tents, we were more or less
indifferent to the weather in camp. The next morning as we were cosily
cooking our breakfast in the shelter of the great sketching umbrellas, a
line of lumber rafts surged past the camp, scarcely a yard from the
bushes on the bank, the raftsmen giving us a cheerful greeting as they
went along. We were anxious to continue the acquaintance, but made no
haste to follow them, because, in our ignorance of the rapidity of the
current, we fancied we could easily overtake them. When we paddled out
into the stream a few minutes later, not an
[Illustration: PUMP AT PÖCHLARN]
object was in sight on the broad surface of the Danube except a hideous,
puffing tow-boat, which left a trail of black smoke behind it, and
churned the river into a sea of vicious waves. As it turned out, we
never once overtook the rafts while they were drifting down-stream. We
passed them several times after they had tied up to the bank for the
night, and they as often floated along near our camp in the morning
while we were still at our toilets or at breakfast. We learned to know
all the raftsmen by sight, but never succeeded in spending a moment in
their company until we happened to land at the same village, their last
station above Vienna, and within sight of that city.
After leaving Linz we began to look forward to the great bugbears of
this part of the river, the Greiner Schwall, the Strudel, and the
Wirbel, famous rapids and whirlpools whose very names are sufficient to
strike dismay to the heart of the boatman, and bring confusion to the
mind of the philologist. Friends of ours who had more than once made the
trip from Donaueschingen to Vienna had given us dramatic descriptions of
the terrors of this passage, and the oldest cruiser of them all had
confessed that he had never ventured to run these rapids, but had always
intrusted himself and his canoe to a native flat-boat. The long-shore
people wherever we had stopped for the last day or two had volunteered
warnings of the dangers that were awaiting us, and we made an unusually
early camp the day we left the Traun in a delightful spot opposite
Grein, so as to be prepared to take our chances with the river monster
in the early morning. Accordingly, after storing our traps with unusual
care, and diligently studying the map, we boldly paddled forth bright
and early the next day, and rapidly approached the gorge just below the
town. As we came near we saw before us a narrow chasm, scarcely a
hundred feet wide, where the river forces its way between precipitous
cliffs on the one hand and a lofty, rocky island on the other, with
piled up ruins of old castles frowning from the crag on either side. We
had no time to hesitate, and no power to stop the onward rush of the
canoes, and were in the surging sea of yellow billows before we realized
it. The canoes behaved like a charm, shipping not a teaspoonful of
water, and riding the waves like water-fowl. So far as our experience
went, we were unable to distinguish the Greiner Schwall, the Strudel,
and the Wirbel apart, for they seemed like one long rapid. Half-way
down, finding that the canoes kept their course with very little
guidance, we whipped out our sketch-books and made hasty notes of the
scenery in a spirit of bravado which might easily have had unpleasant
results.
Long, straight reaches between wild hills carried us to Ybbs--the old
Roman Pons Isidis--at the mouth of the river of the same name, and
thence to Pöchlarn where we landed for our mid-day meal at a river-side
inn with pretty waitresses who made our stay a joy, and on our departure
decorated our coats with nosegays in souvenir of our visit. It was at
Pöchlarn that Kriemhild, on her journey to Hungary, was so brilliantly
entertained by Rüdiger, one of the heroes of the “Niebelungenlied.” Our
experience proves that the traditional hospitality of the time has lost
none of its charm in the lapses of many centuries.
It was but a short run from here to the heavily-wooded heights where the
Benedictine monastery of Melk dominates the surrounding landscape with
its magnificent pile of buildings, the most imposing edifice along the
whole course of the Danube, and celebrated in song and story since its
foundation in the eleventh century. From its grand terrace the full
majesty of the river is disclosed to view, as the broad, shining sheet
of water extends from the plain far beyond Pöchlarn to the shadowy
reaches of the pass below,
[Illustration: _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.