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 outpost of
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.
[Illustration: 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 giantess of 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 countenances disfigured 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
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: 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 river
improvements, 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.
[Illustration: 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.