THE DANUBE WALTER JERROLD ^iiiiliMittMiH LIBRARY lr':'*»-^'')»"i^ THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA BARBARA ■'^! FROM THE LIBRARY OF F. VON BOSCHAN a THE DANUBE WKITEXEGG CASTI.E FROM IHK \\K HEX BACH THE DANUBE BY WALTER JERROLD WITH THIRTY ILLUSTRATIONS BY LOUIS WEIRTER, R.B.A. OF WHICH TWELVE ARE IN COLOUR METHUEN & GO. LTD. 36 ESSEX STREET W.G. LONDON First Published in igii PREFACE THE Rhine appears to have been one of the earliest of Continental " playgrounds " for British tour- ists — to have been such, indeed, long before Switzerland had been exploited. In the days of our grandfathers " everybody " went to the Rhine — it had become as it were the last relic of the grand tour which to earlier generations had been regarded as a necessary finishing off to every gentleman's education. The past popularity of the Rhine is emphasized by the fact that the great river was utilized by both Thackeray and Hood as scenic background for literary purposes. What the Rhine was, the greater, the more beautiful, the grander and more fascinating Danube should become in these days of improved means of communication. Probably in the past its difficulty of access made the enthusiasm of travellers less effective in attracting English visitors to the Danube. As early as 1827, J. R. Planche, poet, dramatist, and historian of costume, made a Descent of the Danube from Ratisbon to Vieftna, and duly published an account of the journey in the following year. Twenty years later another writer, who had "scribbled successfully for the stage," John Palgrave Simpson, published Letters from the Da7i2ibe., describing a journey by steamer from Ratisbon to vi THE DANUBE Budapest. Then, in 1853, "two briefless barristers and a Cambridge undergraduate" journeyed in a Thames rowing-boat from Kelheim to Budapest, and one of their number, R. B. Mansfield, chronicled their adven- tures in The Water Lily oji tJie Danube : being a brief account of a Pair-Oar during a voyage from Lambeth to Pesth. Some years earlier William Beattie had gathered various legends of the Danube to accompany Bartlett's series of engravings of The Beauties of the Danube. Thus it will be seen that in days when the river was more distant than it is now it was not wanting panegyrists. In later years it has been curiously neg- lected, except in the way of casual references and the compact compilations of guide-books. This, however, may be said, so far as I have been able to ascertain, nobody who has journeyed along both the Rhine and the Danube — if we except the pardonable partiality of those who have a patriotic regard for the former — but finds the Danube almost incomparably the more variously fascinating stream. From the time of the Romans onwards, from the time when our authentic chronicles begin, this mighty river has along its many hundreds of miles been the scene of so much history-making that to present the full story of the Danube would be to re-tell a large part of the history of the Continent during two thou- sand years. Such, it need scarcely be said, is not my aim or intention. To bring within the compass of a single volume some indication of the manifold beauties of the river, some hint of the romance that attaches to its castled crags, its villages, towns and cities, some suggestion of the great happenings of the past, some hint of the fascination of the present, is all that I can hope to do. And even so I am primarily concerned with presenting something of the story of the "scenic " Danube — that great stretch of the river which runs PREFACE vii from near Ratisbon in Bavaria to the Iron Gate be- tween Rumania and Servia, the stretch of which, from voyaging in steamers, from tramping along the river- side roads, and from journeying along it by railway, I have a personal knowledge. In applying the word "scenic" to this greater part of the great river, it is not intended to suggest that the upper waters above Kelheim and the lower waters below the Iron Gate have not also much to offer the traveller, but the portion indicated is that which comprises the most famously picturesque parts of the Danube. It includes the beautiful mountainous stretches above and below Passau in Bavaria and Austria, where the river runs at the foot of the southern slopes of the Bohmer Wald ; it includes the wonderful Wachau of Lower Austria, and the finely varied extent of the Hungarian Danube, with the grand Kazan defile, where the river forms a natural barrier between Hungary and Servia. Along the greater part of the great extent which lies between the limits named, comfortable passenger steamers run all through the summer season, and in these steamers the traveller may continue through Rumania and Bul- garia down to the Black Sea, and all the colour and glamour of the Orient. In the upper parts of the river, before we can get afloat on it, the Danube is as it were but an incident in the scenery, but, when once we reach the parts navigable by passenger steamers, the scenery becomes the setting or framework for the mighty stream. The fact that the Danube is known to empty itself into the Black Sea makes many people regard it as a river at so great a distance as not to come within the range of a practical holiday policy ; and if we give the Black Sea its ancient name of the Euxine, we make it seem more distant still. Yet the fact is that much of the beauty of the Upper Danube may viii THE DANUBE be explored by the holiday maker who has but a fort- night or three weeks to spend, for the river has a length of nearly two thousand miles from where it rises in the duchy of Baden to where it joins the Black Sea, crossing or bordering in its course the States of Bavaria, Wurtemburg, Austria, Hungary, Servia, Rumania and Bulgaria, and touching at the northernmost of its various mouths the vast territory of the Russian Empire. In parts the river is of course familiar to many people : those who go to Vienna, for example, see one of the least attractive bits it has to show ; those who go to Budapest see it at its city best ; while those who go to Ulm, Ratisbon, and other Bavarian towns know it in part. But I hope to show that it is by no means the best of the river that is seen by sojourners in any of the larger towns. It is to the visitor who likes to linger in out-of-the-way places that the Danube has most to offer, and in the hundreds of miles of beauties that it has to show there is little fear of places being overrun. That a goodly number of British visitors have "dis- covered" the river I learned from the captain of one of the steamers, who told me that " some seasons there are many English, but as a rule more Americans." Yet the artist and I, on our journey down by boat, and on our riverside wanderings coming back, came across none of our compatriots, or of our transatlantic cousins, except in Vienna. My thanks are due to numerous friends, known and unknown, who afforded me cordial assistance during a journey made yet more memorable by the many kindnesses shown to a travelling stranger. Special thanks, too, must be accorded to my friend Mr. James Baker, F.R.G.S., whose John Westacott might be described as a romance of the Danube, for it was he who first inspired me with the wish to journey down the great river, who brought home to me the fact, PREFACE ix which this volume seeks to enforce, that the Danube is not only an easily accessible but a well-nigh inex- haustibly delightful holiday ground. A word or two should, perhaps, be said as to the spelling of place names adopted. Generally speaking, I have sought to use the names, and the spellings, used in the countries to which the places belong. In bilingual Hungary most places have two names, Magyar and German, in which cases I give the national name, followed by its German equivalent in parentheses. Where there are recognized English names, such as Vienna and Ratisbon, I have used these, as it would in such cases be the merest pedantry to render them Wien and Regensburg. WALTER JERROLD Hampton-on-Thames CONTENTS PAGE PREFACE V I THE UPPER DANUBE CHAP. I. FROM DONAUESCHINGEN TO DONAUWQRTH . . 3 II. DONAUWORTH TO RATISBON 17 III. RATISBON TO PASSAU 49 II THE AUSTRIAN DANUBE IV. PASSAU TO LINZ 75 V. LINZ TO THE WACHAU 99 VI. THE WACHAU 129 VII. THE WACHAU TO Dfev^NY 159 III THE HUNGARIAN DANUBE VIII. FROM THE OLD CAPITAL TO THE NEW . . . 185 IX. THE HUNGARIAN CAPITAL 204 X. BUDAPEST TO BELGRADE 222 XI. BELGRADE TO ORSOVA 243 xii THE DANUBE IV THE LOWER DANUBE CHAP. PAGE XII. THE IRON GATE TO RUSTZUK 269 XIII. RUSTZUK TO THE BLACK SEA 288 INDEX 309 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Weitenegg Castle from the Weitenbach {in colour) Frontispiece FACING PAGE Ratisbon 28 The Walhalla {in colour) 42 Oberhaus and Niederhaus, Passau .... 76 The Strudel {in colour) no St. Nikola 120 Sarmingstein 122 Persenbeug 126 MoLK {in colour) 130 Aggstein {in colour) 134 The Devil's Wall 138 Spitz Vineyards 140 Weissenkirschen 142 DiJRRENSTEIN I48 Durre-nstein Castle . 152 Stein 154 The Market Place, Krems {in colour) . . . .156 Vienna from Leopoldsberg {in colour) .... 174 The Cathedral, Pozsony 188 Gran {in colour) . 200 The Palace, Budapest {in colour) 216 Boats from Szegedin 230 Belgrade 240 Old Turkish Fort, Semendria {in colotir) . . . 244 Bazias 246 Rama Castle {in colour) ....... 250 The Kazan {in colour) 256 The Crown Chapel, Orsova 260 A Caf6 in Ada Kaleh 262 The Iron Gate 272 " The Danuby, the river sometimes of our merry passage " Sir Henry Wotton THE UPPER DANUBE THE DANUBE CHAPTER I FROM DONAUESCHINGEN TO DONAUWORTH . . . the Hercynian forest where the boar Roamed and the tribes withstood the swords of Rome There springs a little stream that grown doth pour Through mountains dark, and plains, the herdsman's home. In swirling volume to the far Eu.xine Sea. From the German IF it cannot be said of the Danube as it was said of the Thames that it is " strong without rage, with- out o'erflowing full," it can certainly be said that, like the Thames, two separate places claim to be the source of the river. These two places are St. Georgen and Donaueschingen — both of them in the Duchy of Baden, both of them in the district of the Black Forest (part of the great Hercynian forest, which in the time of Caesar stretched from the neighbourhood of Basle into the boundless regions of the north), and both of them claiming that they are situated at the very place where the mighty river starts upon its long journey. Un- fortunately for the claims of the former place, the stream that runs thence to Donaueschingen is named the Brigach ; and it is only when that river joins with the Breg, which also rises not far from St. Georgen, that the name Donau or Danube is used. Geographically 4 THE DANUBE perhaps, the source of a river being supposed to be that one of its streams which starts at the point furthest from its mouth, St. Georgen might be entitled to the honour, but custom and sentiment have long since granted it to Donaueschingen ; and as that place embodies the river's name, it is likely long to hold the honour — even as Thames Head will continue in the view of most people to have a better title to being considered the actual source of the Thames than Seven Springs, The rivalry has not unjustly been described by one writer as a matter of Tweedledum and Tweedledee, for when the opposing advocates seek classical support the St. Georgenites can put Tacitus into the witness box, while the Donaueschingites can subpoena Strabo. It is a pretty little quarrel, and we may leave it at that. Another point that need not trouble us over its conflict of testimony is that of the derivation of the name, though it may be noted in passing that it has been variously derived from " Donner," thunder ; from " Tanne," a fir tree ; and from Celtic words " Do Na." The last sugges- tion was surely put forward by an ingenious Donau- eschingite, for once admit it, and the claims of St. Georgen are reduced to the ridiculous. It is at the point where the Brigach and the Breg join that the Danube begins, and there at Donaueschin- gen is where our story of the river on its journey to the sea may also best begin. An old distich runs — "Brigach und Breg Bringen die Donau zu weg," which may be Englished — "Brigach and Breg ' Set the Danube on its way." At the town in which is the " source " is a beautiful estate belonging to Prince Fiirstenberg, a park which has been described as more like an English park than DONAUESCHINGEN TO DONAUWORTH 5 any other on the Continent, and on the lake are many and various waterfowl including, says one veracious chronicler, swans which are the lineal descendants of the first ever introduced into Germany, it is supposed from Cyprus at the time of the Crusades. This is a curious statement seeing that swans are indigenous over the greater part of Europe. Museum, picture galleries and library are here, but for our present purpose the centre of interest is the spring or source, which has been enclosed, decorated with flowers and ornamented with allegorical statuary representing the Baar — the name of the parish — holding the young Danube in her arms "and whispering instructions for her journey." Here, too, is an inscription recording the length of the river and the height of the source above the sea level — "To the sea, 2840 kilometres" (= I775 miles). "Above the sea, 678 metres" (= about 2250 feet). Steps lead down to the water, and there in accordance with an ancient custom the visitor is expected to drink of the Danube, though he is no longer expected to follow the mediaeval plans either of leaping into the stream or pouring into it a cup of wine as an oblation or charm. From the source " the water, which is pure and limpid " is carried by a conduit to the Brigach, and at the point of junction the word " Donau " is inscribed — to remove any lingering doubts from the minds of those inclined to favour the St. Georgen heresy. At Donaueschingen the ill-starred Austrian Princess Marie Antoinette, a child of fourteen, rested on her journey from Vienna to Paris — marriage and the guillotine. Of the many hamlets, villages and small towns that the Danube passes, it will not be possible to say much, except where we pause to learn some ancient legend, some scrap of history, or to indicate things of special beauty or interest that are to be seen. In its first few 6 THE DANUBE miles the course of the river takes us, as Mr. C. E. Hughes puts it, through " part of the Hegau, the land of towering, castle-crowned peaks, the land of legends and traditions innumerable ; " * through Pfohren, with its Duck Castle, so named because it was built in the water, now fallen from its castle dignity, in a field near the river, and Geissingen with its old covered bridge. Most of the way from Donaueschingen to Ulm the railway closely follows the course of the river. Next comes Immendingen — whence the railway branches south through the mountains of the volcanic Hegau which forms the dividing watershed between the Danube and the Rhine where the two rivers most nearly neighbour each other. A few miles below Immendingen is Mohringen, where some of the water of the Danube is supposed to percolate through the earth and reappear some distance to the south as the Aach, which flows into Lake Constance and so becomes part of the Rhine. Below Mohringen is Tuttlingen at the foot of the ruin-crowned Homberg, a prosperous town, and a good centre for excursions, but as an incident on the Danube, chiefly notable for a monument forming yet one more con- nexion with the Rhine ; for here is to be seen a statue, erected nearly twenty years ago to Max Schnecken- burger, author of the German national song Wacht am RJiein. Schneckenburger was born in 1819 at Thalheim, a village some miles to the west, and there he was buried thirty years later. From Tuttlingen the river follows a winding course to Muhlheim, on high ground to the right with a ruined pilgrimage church of Mariahilf beyond, and then, more tortuously still, crossed and re- crossed by the railway to Fridingen. Beuron, the next place of any importance, is notable for its monastery of Benedictines which was originally founded in the * " The Black Forest," p. 276 (Methuen). DONAUESCHINGEN TO DONAUWORTH 7 eleventh century by the Augustines, was suppressed at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and made over to the Benedictines about fifty years ago. On a height to the south of Beuron is a notable chateau, and also within easy reach of the village is a large grotto known as Peter's Cavern: Through a narrow and beautiful valley the river goes on by wooded hills and pleasant, picturesque villages, with ruined castles now and again standing boldly on the rocky heights. Near Gutenstein are the towering rocks of Rabenfels and Heidenfels. The river, winding to and fro among the hills, is more or less closely neighboured, as has been said, by the railway ; while from Tuttlingen to Sigmaringen the course of the stream may be followed by the pedestrian who has leisure — and to him alone is it given to enjoy all the beauties of this picturesque stretch of the Danube. Sigmaringen itself is a town on the right bank that affords a fine centre for exploring the river up or down-stream, and among the things of interest to be seen here is Prince Hohenzollern's Schloss, situated on a precipitous rock immediately above the Danube, with pleasant hills on the further side of the river. In the Schloss is an admirable museum and picture gallery. On the high Brenzkofer Berg, on the left side of the river, is a monument to the Hohenzollerns killed in the war of 1866 and the Franco-Prussian War and from it is to be had a good and extensive view. After Sigmaringen is left behind the valley is less narrow, and the river goes on past small villages and old towns, each of which has no doubt its interest for the leisurely pedestrian. Beyond Reidiingen on the left bank is seen on the right the isolated hill of Bussen, from the summit of which is to be had a view embracing the whole of Upper Swabia and much of the Alps. On the hill is a pilgrimage church and a ruined castle The ruined castles arc so numerous along parts of the 8 THE DANUBE river that is not possible to pause at all ; for it would appear as though in the good old times the population largely consisted of castle-dwelling barons. Zweifalten- dorf has a stalactite cave ; Rechtenstein, with another ruined castle, is a notably beautiful spot ; Ober-Marchtal has a grand old Premonstratensian monastery ; while Munderkirchen, built upon a rock islanded by the forking river, has a new stone bridge with an arch span of one hundred and sixty-four feet. Beyond this the valley is wider. At the village of Ehingen, the railway turns northward from the river, which between here and Ulm receives several affluents from the south, including just before Ulm the Iller, while at Ulm itself, the river Blau comes in from a delightfully wooded and rocky valley on the left. Ulm, the frontier town of Wurtemburg, is important in the story of the Danube for a variety of reasons. In the first place, it is here, fourteen hundred feet above sea-level, that the river becomes effectively navigable for flat-bottomed boats of about a hundred tons, and thus it is the centre of a brisk trade. Then it is a picturesque old city, with many ancient houses still to show, and it was long regarded as a strategic point of great importance, and, therefore, was maintained as a fortress of first rank. It was said, some years ago, that it was capable of sheltering within its fortifications a force of a hundred thousand men. Latterly, it has developed as an industrial and commercial centre, and the ramparts have been acquired by the town for peaceful purposes. Among all that the city has to show the visitor, the ancient Gothic cathedral — the many striking features of which call for a guide-book's help and cannot be touched upon in this gossiping chronicle — stands out most prominently, "Long before reaching Ulm the old cathedral, with its massive but unfinished towers, attracts DONAUESCHINGEN TO DONAUWORTH 9 the attention of the traveller as seen from the road, and the first view of the dark rolling Danube which is obtained before reaching Ulm, is at first sight a grand and imposing object " — thus, in dubious English, wrote a traveller arriving from Augsburg some years ago. Since that was written, the beautiful great tower on the western side with its wonderful sculptured doorway, and wealth of figures has been completed in accordance with the fifteenth-century design left by the last of the original architects. This work of completion occupied thirteen years (1877- 1890) and now the tower, 528 feet in height, has the distinction of being one of the loftiest in the world — thirteen feet higher than that of Cologne cathedral and twenty-seven feet lower than the Wash- ington Monument. From the tower is to be had an extensive view, said to take in the historic battleground of Blenheim, past which the Danube flows some thirty miles away. Writing seventy years ago, a visitor declared that if the tower could be completed, it would be one of the finest in Europe, and such it is now acknowledged to be. The cathedral itself is the second largest in the German Empire, being exceeded only by that at Cologne, and it is supposed to be capable of containing as many as thirty thousand persons. As is fitting in a place regarded as of great military importance, Ulm figures in the annals of war. It was hence that the Elector of Bavaria set out for the famous battlefield of Blenheim some distance down the river, and it was here that the Austrian General Mack shut himself up with a force of over thirty thousand men to stay Napoleon's rapid advance on Vienna in 1805. Despite the importance of Ulm, despite the formidable army he had with him — with ample provisions and ammunition — Mack surrendered the town almost without striking a blow ; " yet somehow he was suffered to escape lo THE DANUBE the punishment of which he was thought to be richly- deserving." If, thanks to the action of one man, the military annals of Ulm are thus in part inglorious, it has the dis- tinction of remarkable association with one of the oldest of the arts of peace. It was here that the "Meistersanger" lingered longest, " preserving without text and without notes the traditional love of their craft." It is true that the Meistersanger lacked on the whole the freshness and fascination of their forerunners the " Minnesanger," but their story forms an interesting chapter in the history of the literature of their land, though a German historian of German literature has sneered at them as "chiefly burghers of towns . . . prudent though uninspired votaries of the Muse," and has declared that in their work " the real soul of Poetry was wanting." It is, how- ever, interesting to know that for nearly five centuries there were burghers to keep the idea of poetry alive if no more, and to know that here in Ulm there remained in 1830 a dozen of the Meistersanger, Nine years later there were but four, and they in 1839 formally made over their insignia and other guild property to a modern singing society. The last formal meeting of the Meister- sanger had taken place in 1770. Ancient Ulm was on the left bank of the Danube — the old city wall along the river front affords a pleasant walk — but now it may be said to include Neu Ulm on the right bank ; indeed for military purposes the two were some years ago made one, though the old town is in Wiirtemburg and the new one in Bavaria. It was at Elchingen, just below Ulm, that Marshal Ney won the victory that caused General Mack to surrender the city and gained for the victor, Napoleon's brave des braves^ the grand eagle of the Legion of Honour and the title of Duke of Elchingen. Beyond the scene of the battle of October 14, 1805, the river DONAUESCHINGEN TO DONAUWORTH ii traverses for many miles the extensive marshlands of Donaumoos and Donauriet, closely neighboured by the railway. About fifteen miles below Ulm, picturesquely situated on the right bank on a hill overlooking the extensive Donaumoos on the further side, is Gunzburg, on the site of the old Roman station of Guntia. This place should be additionally interesting to English visitors as having long possessed a nunnery, founded here, it is supposed after a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, by an English woman named Maria Ward. Lauingen and DiUingen are small, attractive old towns. The first was the birthplace of Albertus Magnus — a celebrated scholar whom we shall meet again on our downward journey along the river — of whom a bronze statue is to be seen in the market-place. The next places, Hochstad and Blindheim, on the left bank, though small, loom large in history as the scenes of decisive battles. As long ago as the eleventh century two battles were fought here between the Emperor Henry IV., and the Bavarian Guelph I., when the latter was defeated and lost his dukedom. Then, in 1703, the Elector of Bavaria and Marshal Villars defeated the Austrians, and but a short interval elapsed before the Danube villages found themselves, in August, 1704, once more, thanks to the great military genius of the Duke of Marlborough, the scene of one of the " fifteen decisive battles of the world," a battle on which, accord- ing to one historian, the fate, not only of Europe, but of progressive civilization depended. The village of Bhndheim or Blenheim was strongly occupied by the French, and the French-Bavarian army occupied the ground on the north to beyond the village of Lutzingen, while on the eastern side of the slight valley of the Nebel, the little stream which runs into the Danube at Blenheim, were the allies under Marlborough. It is not necessary here to tell the story. Is it not told in all the 12 THE DANUBE history books, and at length in the biographies of the great commander, and in Creasy's " Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World" ? It may, however, be well to recall the words in which Alison in his " Life of Marlborough " emphasizes the decisiveness of the battle. " Had the French triumphed," he says, " the Pro- testants might have been driven, like the Pagan heathens of old by the sons of Pepin, beyond the Elbe ; the Stuart race, and with them Romish ascendancy, might have been re-established in England ; the fire lighted by Latimer and Ridley might have been extinguished in blood ; and the energy breathed by religious freedom into the Anglo-Saxon race might have expired. The destinies of the world would have been changed. Europe, instead of a variety of independent states whose mutual hostility kept alive courage, while their national rivalry stimulated talent, would have sunk into the slumber attendant on universal dominion. The Colonial Empire of England would have withered away and perished, as that of Spain has done in the grasp of the Inquisition. The Anglo-Saxon race would have been arrested in its mission to overspread the earth and subdue it. The centralized despotism of the Roman Empire would have been renewed on Continental Europe ; the chains of Romish tyranny, and with them the general infidelity of France before the Revolution, would have extinguished or perverted thought in the British islands." Voltaire summed up the battle of Blenheim which "dissipated for ever Louis the Fourteenth's once proud visions of almost universal conquest " in the following words : " Such was the celebrated battle which the French call the battle of Hochstet (Hochstad), the Germans Plentheim (Blind- heim), and the English Blenheim. The conquerors had about five thousand killed, and eight thousand wounded the greater part being on the side of Prince Eugene. DONAUESCHINGEN TO DONAUWORTH i J The French army was almost entirely destroyed : of sixty thousand men, so long victorious, there never reassembled more than twenty thousand effective. About twelve thousand killed, fourteen thousand prisoners, all the cannon, a prodigious number of colours and standards, all the tents and equipages, the general of the army, and one thousand two hundred officers of mark in the power of the conqueror, signalized that day." Recalling the effect of the great battle we may also call to mind the passage in which Addison describes it in his poem in laudation of Marlborough : — " The rout begins, the Gallic squadrons run Compelled in crowds to meet the fate they shun. Thousands of fiery steeds with wounds transfixed Floating in gore, with their dead masters mixed, 'Midst heaps of spears and standards driv'n around, Lie in the Danube's bloody whirlpools drowned. Troops of bold youths, born on the distant Saone, Or sounding borders of the rapid Rhone, Or where the Seine her flow'ry fields divides. Or where the Loire through winding vineyards glides, In heaps the rolling billows sweep away, And into Scythian seas their bloated corps convey. From Blenheim's tow'rs the Gaul with wild affright, Beholds the various havoc of the fight. . . . With floods of gore that from the vanquished fell The marshes stagnate, and the rivers swell. Mountains of slain lie heaped upon the ground, Or midst the roarings of the Danube drowned." The correct periods, the conventional epithets of the author of " The Campaign " somehow leave us less moved than does the simple episode presented by a later poet, for it must have been of the little Nebel stream that Southey was thinking when he wrote his simple satire on military glory in " The Battle of Blenheim " : — 14 THE DANUBE ' ' And everybody praised the Duke, Who this great fight did win.' ' But what good came of it at last ? ' Quoth little Peterkin. ' Why that I cannot tell,' said he, ' But 'twas a famous victory.' " The poet's " Old Kaspar " had not had the advantage of studying history in the light of Alison, and his satire has, it is to be feared, had little effect on war. Indeed, two years after the ballad was first published, further fighting was to take place in this very neighbourhood, when in 1800 Moreau cut off the Austrians' routes into Italy, and so facilitated Napoleon's Italian campaign. At Donauworth, on the left bank, we still have news of battle, for this old "free city" was stormed by Gustavus Adolphus in 1632 and was captured by King Ferdinand two years later, while it also played an important part in the preliminaries that led up to the battle of Blenheim, seeing that it was in this neighbour- hood that Marlborough defeated the Bavarians and cut them off from their French allies. His own account of the engagement was sent to the States-General in the following terms : 't> " High and Mighty Lords. — " Upon our arrival at Onderingen, on Tuesday, I understood that the Elector of Bavaria had des- patched the best of the foot to guard the post of Schellenburg, where he had been casting up entrench- ments for some days, because it was of great import- ance ; I therefore resolved to attack him there ; and marched yesterday morning by three o'clock, at the head of a detachment of six thousand foot and thirty squadrons of our troops, and three battalions of Imperial grenadiers ; whereupon the army begun their march to follow us J but the way being very long and bad, we DONAUESCHINGEN TO DONAUVVORTH 15 could not get to the river Wertz till about noon, and 'twas full three o'clock before we could lay bridges for our troops and cannon, so that all things being ready, we attacked them about six in the evening. The attack lasted a full hour : the enemies defended them- selves very vigorously, and were very strongly intrenched, but at last were obliged to retire by the valour of our men, and the good God has given us a complete victory. We have taken fifteen pieces of cannon, with all their tents and baggage. The Count D'Arco, and the other generals that commanded them, were obliged to save themselves by swimming over the Danube. I heartily wish your High Mightinesses good success from this happy beginning, which is so glorious for the arms of the allies, and from which I hope, by the assistance of heaven, we may reap many advantages. We have lost very many brave officers, and we cannot enough bewail the loss of the Sieurs Goor and Beinheim, who were killed in the action. The Prince of Baden and General Thungen are slightly wounded ; Count Stirum has received a wound across his body, but it is hoped he will recover ; the Hereditary Prince of Hesse-Cassel, Count Horn, Lieutenant - General, and the Major- Generals Wood and Pallandt are also wounded. A little before the attack begun, the Baron of Moltenburg, Adjutant-General to Prince Eugene, was sent to me by his Highness, with advice that the Marshals of Villeroy and Tallard were marched to Strasburg, having promised a great reinforcement to the Elector of Bavaria, by way of the Black Forest, and I had advice, by another hand, that they designed to send him fifty battalions and sixty squadrons of their best troops. Since I was witness how much the Sieur Mortagne distinguished himself in this whole action, I could not omit doing him the justice to recommend him to your High Mightinesses to make up to him the loss of his general ; i6 THE DANUBE wherefore I have pitched upon him to bring this to your High Mightinesses, and to inform you of the particulars. " Marlborough " Donauvvorth grew to be a place of such importance that it was for a time the seat of the Dukes of Upper Bavaria, until Duke Louis the Severe, who in 1256 had his wife beheaded on an unfounded charge of infidelity, removed his capital to Munich. It is suggested that the change of capital was dictated by the duke's guilty conscience. In the church attached to the suppressed Benedictine Abbey of the Holy Cross here, is to be seen the sarcophagus of the unhappy, Desdemona-like Duchess Mary. The story runs that no sooner had the deed been perpetrated than incontestable evidence of the duchess's innocence was forthcoming, and the con- science-stricken husband became grey in a single night : — " And still that mangled form so fair Was present to his mind ; His cheek grew haggard with despair — No refuge could he find. The furrows deepened on his brow. All sleep forsook his eye ! His gait so proud to earth was bowed, But still he could not die ! A deadly weight, a dreary fate, A voice that said ' Live on ! Each wretched breast may hope for rest. But thou canst hope for none.' " CHAPTER II DONAUWORTH TO RATISBON "... the Walhalla rises, purely white ; Temple of Fame for all Germania's great, A splendid beacon on a leafy height, To hearten men below to dedicate Their service to the service of their land." Fro7n the Gennan FROM the old capital of the old dukedom to Ingoldstadt the river for nearly forty miles finds its way through part of the Bavarian plain, another broad-stretching Donaumoos, or marshland, which has, however, been largely reclaimed and brought under cultivation. On the left bank much of the ground is higher and well wooded. Near Lechsend, which is on the left bank, the river Lechs comes in on the right — and a little way inland in the same direction is the village of Rain, where in March, 1632, the aged Bavarian General Tilly was mortally wounded in seeking to stay the triumphant progress of Gustavus Adolphus. In the following month Tilly died of his wounds at Ingoldstadt. The village of Oberhausen on the right bank as the river nears Neuberg is associated with the memory of a remarkable " common " soldier who fell near there on June 21, 1800, and to whose memory a monument has there been erected. This was La Tour d'Auvergne — presumably a member of the family which had given France one of her most famous military leaders in c ^7 i8 THE DANUBE Turenne. It is said of d'Auvergne that he was " the darh'ng of the army, the model of modern chivalry — a second Bayard." He refused to be anything more than a common soldier, being satisfied with the title granted him by Napoleon in consideration of his gallant exploits, of " first grenadier of the French army." " I am only proud," said he, "of serving my country; I care nothing for praise or honour ; my reward is in the consciousness of performing my duty ; but thus to be praised to my face, it hurts my feelings — that word ' consideration ' will be the torment of my life." Having retired into private life during a period of peace, d'Auvergne came forward when the son of one of his old friends was drawn as a conscript, and insisted upon taking his place. Thus it came about that he took part in the fight near Oberhausen when, rushing ahead of his comrades to cut down the Austrian colour-bearer, he was surrounded by the enemy and transfixed by a lancer who attacked him from behind. " For three days the drums were covered with crape, and on the first Vendemiaire, his sword of honour was suspended in the Church of the Invalides at Paris. The forty-sixth demi-brigade from that time forward carried his heart in a silver box sus- pended to the colours of the regiment ; and on every muster his name was recalled in these terms — Remember La Tour d'Auvergne who died on the field of honour ! " A scrap of verses quoted by Dr. Beattie suggests that there existed something of another romance than that of his death. " ' Nay, heed not me,' the hero cried. And faintly waved his hand ; ' Back to the charge ! till Austria's pride Be prostrate on the strand ! Cherish my fame — avenge my death ; To-day your laurels earn ! Glory survives the loss of breath — ' So died the brave d'Auvergne ! DONAUWORTH TO RATISBON 19 The tidings flew from line to line, His comrades wept the while, But what was all their grief to thine Fair Blanche of Argentueil ! " The next place of note is Neuburg, a pleasant old town situated a few miles below Oberhausen on hilly ground on the right. This was of old the capital of a small principality ; the handsome old castle rising above the varied roofs on the lower part of the bank is now partly used as a barracks, while the newer western portion erected in the early part of the sixteenth century is utilised for housing the local archives. The town is picturesquely placed, and has many antiquities of interest. Beyond lie further stretches of the Donau- moos, the next point with a history being the old and interesting town of Ingoldstadt which was at one time a place of considerable importance as the seat of a large university, founded in the latter half of the fifteenth century. At the beginning" of the nineteenth the university was removed to Landshutt and some years later to Munich. There are a number of interest- ing old buildings in the town and in the Ober-Pfarr- Kirche (1439) are to be seen monuments to Tilly and to Dr. Johann Eck, the great controversial opponent of Martin Luther. I have seen it recorded somewhere that the Duke of Marlborough, visiting Ingoldstadt was presented with a portion of the skull of Oliver Cromwell. If the incident be true, and the relic genuine, it would seem as though the whole skull which was a few years ago much discussed as Cromwell's could scarcely have been his. Below Ingoldstadt we have Mehring on the right bank and then on the left Vohenburg, with a large ruined castle, at one time the seat of a Margravate where the tragic marriage of Albert and Agnes, of which we shall learn more at Straubing, took place. Then 20 THE DANUBE comes Pforringf on the left, and Neustadt on the right. At Pforring, Kriemhilda, bound for the kingdom of the Huns and her marriage with Etzel, took leave of her brothers : "They rode as far as Pforring upon the Danube strand Then of the queen began they kind quittance to demand Since homeward they returning unto the Rhine would ride ; Nor might this without weeping 'twixt loving friends betide." Neustadt is a good railway centre for a beautiful and interesting stretch of the river. A little below it on the same bank is Eining, a small place at one time of great importance as having been for nearly five centuries a frontier station of the Roman Empire, under the name of Abrisina, and now worth visiting for its remains of that station. Here was the junction of the military roads which connected the Roman territory along the Danube with the Rhine and Gaul. On the opposite side of the river is Hienheim from near which starts up the steep hillside the great Limes Romanus — the wall which was built by the Emperor Probus from the Danube to the Rhine, a wall according to Gibbon nearly two hundred miles, and according to another authority nearly three hundred and fifty miles in length. Says Gibbon : " The country which now forms the circle of Swabia, had been left desert in the age of Augustus by the emigration of its ancient inhabitants. The fertility of the soil soon attracted a new colony from the adjacent provinces of Gaul. Crowds of adventurers, of a roving temper and of desperate fortunes, occupied the doubtful possession, and acknowledged by the payment of tithes the majesty of the Empire. To protect these new subjects a line of frontier garrisons was gradually extended from the Rhine to the Danube. About the reign of Hadrian, when that mode of defence began to DONAUWORTH TO RATISBON 21 be practised, these garrisons were connected and covered by a strong entrenchment of trees and palisades. In place of so rude a bulwark, the Emperor Probus constructed a stone wall of a considerable height, and strengthened it by towers at convenient distances. From the neighbourhood of Neustadt and Ratisbon on the Danube, it stretched across hills, valleys, rivers and morasses, as far as Wimpfen on the Neckar and at length terminated on the banks of the Rhine after a winding course of near two hundred miles. This barrier, uniting the two mighty streams that protected the provinces of Europe, seemed to fill up the vacant space through which the barbarians, and particularly the AUemanni, could penetrate with the greatest facility into the heart of the Empire. But the experience of the world, from China to Britain, has exposed the vain attempt of fortifying an extensive tract of country. An active enemy who can select and vary his points of attack must, in the end, discover some feeble spot, or some unguarded moment. The strength as well as the attention of the defenders is divided ; and such are the blind effects of terror on the firmest troops, that a line broken in a single place is almost instantly deserted. The fate of the wall which Probus erected may confirm the general observation. Within a few years after his death, it was overthrown by the AUemanni. Its scattered ruins, universally ascribed to the power of the daemon, now serve only to excite the wonder of the Swabian peasant." * The remains of this great wall where it started from the Danube, known in German as the Pfahl-Graben, and sometimes as the Devil's Wall, are to be seen little more than a mile below Hienheim. From here we have for some miles a lovely bit of the Danube, with grand * " The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," chap. xii. 22 THE DANUBE forest-covered hills in the immediate neighbourhood, and the river following a winding course through them — part of the way between precipitous rocks rising ruggedly three or four hundred feet above the water. A short distance down on the right bank and close to the shore is the extensive Benedictine Monastery of Weltenburg dating from the eighth century, but turned in the middle of the nineteenth into a brewery. Dr. Beattie describes how, after some one had expatiated on the past glory of the place, a bystander said " It is written that Weltenburg shall rise again like a phoenix from its ashes ; that the pilgrim shall again bow at its altar ; that the abbot shall preside at its chapter ; and " He was interrupted by a Bavarian sitting by with " Never ! your abbots were mere men — sinners like others, and if they possessed any fervour, it was but the natural warmth of the grape. I have listened with much patience to what you have heard about the crusades, and so forth ; but I also know a little of the history of the place ; for, as ' successor to the abbots,' several documents have fallen into my hands, which assure me that they will never resume their old quarters ; and one of the strongest reasons is, that the old cellars are empty ; the old vineyard uprooted, and that our Bavarian beer is too cold for their stomachs. . . . Depend upon it, sir, if the abbots of old had restricted themselves to such virtuous potations, and been a little more chary of politics, I had not this day been the 'brewing abbot of Weltenburg.' These abbots, sir, were jovial fellows ; most of them had worn casques in early life, and, although afterwards taking shelter under the cowl, ended with the cask at last. In my early days, one of their drinking songs was a special favourite at the Wirthshaus, and seems almost prophetic of the brewery that was to come. It is still a favourite. DONAUWORTH TO RATISBON 23 " ' Brothers, life is frail as grass ! Dry clay is apt to moulder, But moistened with a cheerful glass Good wine's the best of solder ; Then, brothers, drink and shout the while, Waesheil ! Waesheil ! .Brothers ! if the journey's rough, And needs some small concession, To-morrow will be time enough For penance and confession. Meantime, we'll drink and shout the while, Waesheil ! Waesheil ! Brothers, prayer is vastly good. So (after meals) is fasting 'Tis well to watch beside the rood ; But, while there's liquor lasting We'll chant thro' sacristy and aisle, Waesheil ! Waesheil !■' " As we near Kelheim a striking building takes the eye ; this is the fine dome of the Befreiungshalle, which rises from woodland on the summit of the Michaelsberg on the rocky left bank. This grand classical edifice (the ** complement " of the Walhalla which we shall see below Ratisbon) was built for Louis the First, of Bavaria. It was founded in 1842 and opened just twenty-one years later, on the fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of Leipzig. Its name, the Hall of Liberation, indicates the purpose for which it was erected — to commemorate the freeing of the country from foreign domination by the final over- throw of Napoleon. On the columned outer walls great female figures each nearly twenty feet high stand as emblems of eighteen German provinces, while within the great marble rotunda are thirty-four representations in Carrara marble of the Genius of Victory designed by Schwanthaler, between each pair being a bronze shield made from captured French guns and inscribed with the names of battles won. Other inscriptions include 24 THE DANUBE the names of great generals and of captured fortresses. From the external gallery is to be had a grand view up and down this lovely bit of the Danube, over the town of Kelheim and the valley of the river Altmiihl which here joins the Danube. Between Weltenburg and Kelheim the abruptly rising rocks topped with trees that border the river have been given various names owing to their fancied resemblance to the thing from which they are named — the " Lion," the " Bishop," the " Crocodile," the " Pulpit," " Peter and Paul," and so forth. This part of the river can only be explored by boat, which should be taken from Hienheim to Kelheim, and not in the reverse direction owing to the slowness with which boats can go up-stream. As there is no pathway by the riverside owing to the precipitous nature of much of the lime- stone cliffs which rise sheer from the water, the boatmen going up-stream through the Lange Wand, as the defile is named, have to pull themselves along by the aid of rings, fastened for that purpose in the rocky walls. There have not been wanting enthusiasts who describe this as the finest part of the river from its source to the Black Sea. Kelheim, backed by the forest, is on the low land at the foot of the hill on which the Befreiungshalle stands, and at the junction of the Altmiihl with the Danube. Here too the Ludwig Canal which joins the Main with the Danube, reaches the latter river, thus, as it were, enislanding the town. Kelheim is an old place with remains of an old Roman tower, a castle of the Dukes of Bavaria, now used for government offices, and other visible evidences of its one-time importance. From Kelheim to Ratisbon is about twenty miles — the railway keeps fairly close to the river for most of the distance — of pleasant scenery along the winding stream. The first half of the journey is flat, the second between DONAUWORTH TO RATISBON 25 low hills. Opposite Kapfelberg with its limestone quarries on the left bank — whence was taken the stone of which Ratisbon cathedral and bridge are built — is the Teufelsfelsen. Shortly before reaching Abbach on the right is to be seen the memorial erected in 1794 to commemorate the making of the road along the river here. This memorial takes the form of a large tablet inscrip- tion on the rock face, with in front, on the bank raised upon massive pedestals, two large couchant lions carved in stone, " one looking into the river, the other apparently trying to make out the inscription." Abbach itself is an attractive village amid greenery dominated by its slender-spired church, with the remains of an ancient castle — one of the " common objects " of a long Danube journey. This is Heinrichsburg, or King Henry's Castle and is interesting as the birthplace of Henry the Second (canonized for his many benefactions to the Church) and as one of the seats of his splendour as King of Germany and Holy Roman Emperor. In his age the monarch turned to the consolations of religion, in expiation it is suggested in the following lines of earlier crimes : " With guilt and grief oppressed, to soothe his pain, The leech prescribed — but he prescribed in vain. Then came the priest. ' Arise,' quoth he, ' unshod In pilgrim weeds approach the house of God ! There, prostrate to St. Emmeram, confess How thou hast revelled in unrighteousness — Denied thy heart nought that thy heart could crave And ask his help to snatch thee from the wave Of heavenly wrath ! Nor grudge, if he demands Some small accession to our Abbey lands ; That gift alone shall purge away thy crimes, Blessed in thy life, renowned through after times, If for each crime one acre thou wilt pay ^ 'An acre ! saidst thou ? By our lady, nay ! If thus I pay — priest ! Where were my domains ! Thy cowl, mcthinks, might cover what remains ! ' " 26 THE DANUBE Oberndorf, a little distance below Abbach, is chiefly to be recalled for a tragic act of vengeance and its remarkable consequences. Hither Count Otto of Wittelsbach, who in 1208 had murdered the Emperor Philip at Bamberg, fled, and here he was overtaken and slain. The long story of the subsequent marvels may be summarized as follows. The murderer being killed, his head was, cut off and thrown into the Danube, but either the river refused to accept the grisly object or Count Otto's passion, strong in death, still animated the severed head, for " refusing to sink or move down with the current, it continued to gnash its teeth, and to fix its glaring eyes on the spectators with a menacing look, which none but the ' black friar of Ebrach ' could with- stand." The friar, holding in his hand a black cross (which had been brought by an eagle from Calvary !) went to the river bank and addressed the floating head in the following awful words : " Dus. milabundus. Dom. infernis. presto, diabolorum ! " on hearing which the head whirled round, shook its clotted locks, and sank, plump to the bottom of the river ! The good people of Obern- dorf fell upon their knees at the miracle, in thankfulness at having got rid of the uncomfortable spectacle. That night and the following day, however, blue flames were observed playing over the surface of the water where the head had unwillingly disappeared. The black friar of Ebrach was, however, again equal to the occasion, for he planted the black cross on the river bank opposite the manifestation, and in seven days the flames had entirely disappeared ! The head having thus been finally disposed of, the body of the Count Otto was left exposed on a bare rock — thenceforward to be known as " the Murder Stone " — to pass into decay, the spot being duly respected as a haunted one : " Where oft ye may hear the voice of death, And oft ye may see dark Otto's form. DONAUWORTH TO RATISBON 27 As he rides on the silver mists of the heath, And chants a ghostly dirge in the storm." Through a few miles of delightful and quietly picturesque scenery, the Danube winds on from this haunted spot towards Ratisbon. And as we near that city, beyond the suppressed Benedictine monastery of Priifening, near where the railway crosses the Danube, the rapid stream passes round several small islands. Just beyond the railway bridge, the Naab comes in on the left from an attractive valley, and low hills on the same bank mark the journey round the next bend which brings us within sight of the bridges and towers of Ratisbon itself. Most of the earlier describers of the Danube began the account of their downward journeying at Ratisbon — except the adventurous three who navigated the " Water Lily," and they joined the great river by way of the Main and Danube Canal, and so reached the latter stream at Kelheim. If we look at the general map of Europe it is easy to recognize why this should be so, and even now, probably, most tourists intending to take the passenger steamers from where they start at Passau make first for Ratisbon, and they are all well rewarded by so doing. Though it is the many old houses and towers, the twin crocketted spires of delicate openwork of the cathedral, the many nooks and corners and amazingly artistic " bits " that impress us when we wander about the town, it is here the river that claims our first attention. The wonderful " blue " river, seen as I saw it here under heavy grey skies, shows of a warm green colour — a green on the yellow side of greenness. Strauss's waltz has impressed the " blue " Danube on our minds most persistently, yet here again and again we find ourselves commenting on its greenness and even its greyness, and wondering why it should have got its reputation for blueness. Inquiry of the captain of a 28 THE DANUBE Danube steamer settled the matter. *' If you want to see the Danube really blue you must come to it in the winter," said he. When we stand in autumn on the fine old twelfth- century stone bridge — built, says tradition, by the devil — or walk about the long islands Ober Wohrd and Unterer Wohrd — islands which are really one, being con- nected by a narrow spit of land — it is the wonderful yellowish greenness of the rapidly swirling water that strikes us, that and the rapidity of the current which, as it is forced into narrow channels by the isletted piers of the bridge, whirls and swirls onwards, breaking into white foam. The bridge rises gradually to where, about the centre of it, there is on the western parapet the statue of the " Briickenmannchen," the " little bridge man," or naked figure of a boy seated astride a wedge of stone, and with hand shading his eyes, looking at the cathedral spires. It is an ingenious piece of statuary, for even as if one person pauses in the street and looks upwards, other^' passers-by will inevitably do the same, having reached this point on the bridge we almost instinctively turn to look in the direction the " Mann- chen " is ever looking, and doing so we get a beautiful view of the old town dominated by the beautiful spires, the Golden Tower and other high buildings rising from a grand medley of roofs, while in the foreground is the quaint old stone gateway through which we reach the bridge, close-neighboured by a fine steep stretch of dark tiled roof, broken by its little dormers — presumably for ventilating purposes. Looking up-stream from here, we have the Ober Wohrd, largely covered with buildings, and on the further side of it a pleasant tree-grown branch of the river with low green hills and woodlands in the distance. From the nearer of these hills, by the village of Winzer, is to be had a beautiful general view over the whole of Ratisbon. DONAUWORTH TO RATISBON 29 Looking down-stream, just below the bridge is the Unterer Wohrd, also with many buildings on it, and a mill, the great wheel of which is seen incessantly turning with the ever hasting stream. Both up and down- stream the view is broken by an ugly iron bridge, for each of these islands is thus connected with the city. At the further end of the stone bridge is Stadtamhof, an old town which has suffered much in the course of the warfare of which Ratisbon has been so often the scene ; it was destroyed by the Swedes during the Thirty Years' War, and was burned down by the Austrians in 1 809. It has thus nothing of special interest to show the visitor, though when the market of covered booths down the broad main street is in full swing, it is a picturesque and animated scene. Crossing the bridge one may justly recall Napoleon's words : " Votre pont est trh desavantagenseme7it bati p07ir la navigation^ While on the bridge it may be as well to repeat the full legend which ascribes its building to the devil. It runs that the architect of the cathedral had a particularly clever apprentice, to whom he delegated the task of erecting a stone bridge across the Danube. The young man set to work with great self-confidence, making a bet with his master that the bridge which he was about to begin would be completed before the coping-stone was laid on the cathedral which was already far advanced. The cathedral continued to grow with such rapidity that the bridge-builder began to despair about winning his bet, and to wish that he had not entered into so rash an engagement. Cursing his own slow progress he wished that the devil had the building of the bridge. No sooner were the words out of his mouth than a venerable seem- ing monk stood before him and offered at once to take charge of the work. "Who and what art thou?" inquired the young architect. " A poor friar," responded the other, "who in his youth having learnt something of 30 THE DANUBE thy craft would gladly turn his knowledge to the advantage of his convent." " So ! " said the young architect, looking at him more particularly, " I think I see a cloven hoof, and a whisking tail to boot ! But no matter ; since thou comest in search of employment, build me those fifteen arches before May-day, and thou shalt have a devil's fee for thy pains." " And what ? " inquired the fiend. "Why," replied the young man, " as thou hast a particular affection for the souls of men, I will ensure thee the first two — male and female — that shall cross this bridge." " Say three — and done," said the devil eagerly, and throwing off his friar's habit. "Three be it," said the architect, at which the devil set readily to work. Before nightfall the spandrels were set — the stone came to hand ready hewn, the mortar ready mixed. The devil was as good as his word, and on May-day morning the bridge was completed, and the obliging fiend lay in wait under the second arch ready to pounce upon his fee. A crowd had collected to see and try the bridge, but before any one could set foot on it the cunning architect called upon them to stop, saying that in the opening of the bridge there was a solemn ceremony to be performed before it could be pronounced safe for public use. He then called to his foreman. " Let the strangers take precedence," and at his words a rough wolfdog, a cock and a hen were set at large and driven over the first arch. Instantly an awful noise was heard from beneath the bridge, and some of the people declared that they plainly heard the words, " Cheated ! cheated, of my fee ! " Needless to say that, after such an episode, a procession of monks and the sprinkling of holy water were necessary before the bridge could be regarded as really safe. The bridge-builder's cunning in making use of the devil and then outwitting him, according to the legend, had yet a tragic sequel for the young architect's master, DONAUWORTH TO RATISBON 31 finding himself beaten in their contest, threw himself from one of the towers of the cathedral. Should the incredulous want proof, one of the carven figures high on the edifice is said to be placed there as in the act of throwing itself down in witness to the truth of the tragedy, and, incidentally of course, also to the diabolic origin of the beautiful bridge. Turning from the Danube itself to this most impor- tant of the towns on its banks that we have yet reached, it will be found that Ratisbon is a place full, at once of present fascination and of interesting association. The fascination can only be indicated, the associations only glanced at where the city must necessarily be compressed within the narrow limits of something less than a chapter. The buildings of this city of towers, in their variety and picturesqueness, offer an almost endless feast to the artist and the lover of old places. The magnificent cathedral, the quaint old Rathaus, the three old gateways — the Alte Kapelle, the Schotten Kirche, St, Emmeram's Abbey Church, and numerous old houses take the attention in succession, while the narrow streets, the broad market- places with their animated crowds offer much of interest. The general impression remaining in the mind after wandering about is one of endlessly varied gables, of red- tiled roofs broken by tiny dormers, square towers and twinned spires. The markets round about the cathedral, and in the open space on which the somewhat bleak-looking Neupfarrkirche stands are lively scenes with numerous peasant women exposing, in curious boat-shaped wooden boxes, in baskets, or on outspread sheets of newspaper, their fruit, vegetables and other produce ; then, too, there are rows of stalls with umbrella-like awnings, and all the varied display of a continental market. Perhaps one of the most notable features (here, and in many other markets all along the course of the river) is the 32 THE DANUBE extraordinary number of fungi, freshly gathered, and dry and wizened, which are offered for sale. The mushroom that we know — and to which in our ignorance or prejudice we limit ourselves — is not to be seen ; but the variety of its congeners that are shown would delight the heart of any enthusiastic fungologist. Evidently those of the peasants who have not fruit or vegetables, eggs or fowls, butter or cream to sell, search the woods and fields for edible fungi, and from the quantity displayed, it may be assumed, find a ready sale for them in the towns. Another market that is interesting is that at the eastern end of the Kepler Strasse, in which the fish caught in the Danube are exposed for sale, "all alive, oh." They are kept crowded together in oblong tubs and long wooden troughs like feeding troughs, so crowded indeed, and with so little of their native element, that it is surprising that they keep alive at all. The fish I noticed included pike — up to about two feet in length — barbel, and a deep fish, fifteen to eighteen inches long, with curious horny-looking scales of a large size along the back and near the gills and tail. The Cathedral of Ratisbon — " one of the finest Gothic churches in Germany " is a grand and beautiful pile, built between the years 1275 and 1534 (the spires were added in 1859-1869) ; and as the architects employed upon it during the two and a half centuries that it was a-building included the Roritzers, a father and two sons, the words which Longfellow used of Strasburg Cathedral are no less appropriate here : — " The architect Built his great heart into these sculptured stones, And with him toiled his children, and their lives Were builded with his own into the walls As offerings to God." It was by one of the younger Roritzers, that the peculiar feature of the beautiful western front — the DONAUWORTH TO RATISBON 33 triangular porch — was designed. Within the wonderfully proportioned building is much that is interesting to the student of ecclesiastical architecture. Such details, however, must be sought in the guide-books.* The small tower on the north is known as the Eselsturm or Donkey's Tower, and it is said to have had that name given it because the winding inclined plane by which it is ascended was used during the building of the cathedral for donkeys to carry up loads of material required by the builders. The tower is part of the old Romanesque edifice which the present structure super- seded and it has been suggested that it was probably the belfry of the older cathedral. The old Rathaus (Town Hall), now a kind of museum of national and municipal relics, with its high- pitched tiled roof, its flower-bedecked windows, and its ornamental doorway in the corner of the Rathausplatz attracts attention before we learn that it is not only the old-time centre of Ratisbon civil life, but was for nearly a century and a half before 1806 the meeting place of the German Imperial Diet. The wholesome admonitory inscription which those proceeding to the Diet meetings were expected to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest ran to the following effect : " Let every senator who enters this court to sit in judgment, lay aside all private affections ; anger, violence, hatred, friendship and adulation ! Let thy whole attention be given to the public welfare : for as thou hast been equitable or unjust in passing judgment on others, so mayst thou expect to stand acquitted or condemned before the awful tribunal of God." The wooden ceiling, sixteenth- century frescoes and old stained glass of the Diet Hall * " Regensburg in seiner Vorzeit und Gegenwart Beschreibung der Stadt und Umgebung ; " von J. Fink, gives not only a fairly full story of the things to be seen in the town, but also of the neighbourhood up to Befreiungshalle and down to Walhalla. n 34 THE DANUBE or Reichssaal, are noteworthy features. In the Rathaus, too, are some grand old tapestries, and — for the delectation of those who sigh over the good old times — a very chamber of horrors in the torture chamber, with its rack, "Spanish donkey," "Jung- frauenschoss," and such-like witnesses to past mani- festations of man's inhumanity to man. The collection of these demoniacally ingenious instruments is a particularly good one, and should suffice to impress the least imaginative with ** the horrors." St. Emmeram's Abbey — of which the church is the main part now left, the site of the abbey being occupied by the palace of the Prince of Thurn and Taxis — lies on the south side of the town, with one of the four remaining town gates — the Emmeramer Tor — near by. The church is still worth a visit from those interested in ecclesiastical art and architecture, in older tombs and shrines of saints ; here, too, they will find the tombs of King Childeric of France and other mediaeval notables. The bridge gate we have already glanced at; the other two left standing when the town wall was demolished about half a century ago are the Prebrunntor on the west and the tall tile-roofed Osten tor. The Schotten- kirche (or St. Jacob's Church) has a fine pillared door- way chiefly remarkable for the number of quaintly carven figures of men and beasts about it. The many square towers that rise above the surrounding roofs on many of the streets are survivals, peculiar I believe to Ratisbon, of the old days when every nobleman had to be prepared to defend his house. And the story of Ratisbon suggests that such preparation was necessary, for in the course of nine hundred years the city had to withstand a siege fourteen times. The highest of these towers, the Goldene Turm in the Wahlenstrasse, rises one hundred and seventy feet above the pavement ; another is on the Haidplatz, and DONAUWORTH TO RATISBON 35 yet another not far from the bridge, attached to a house on which is a gigantic mural painting of David attacking Goliath. It may well be that this subject arises from an episode in the history of Ratisbon, also made the subject of a house-wall painting. This episode was a fight between one of the citizens of the place and a giant. The story runs that in the year 930 a terrible combat was fought on the Haidplatz between a gigantic Hun, Craco by name, and Hans Bollinger, a valiant burgher of Ratisbon. The Hun had already flung forty knights out of the saddle when, in the presence of the Emperor, he was confronted by the dauntless Bollinger. The Emperor marked the champion twice over the mouth with the sign of the cross it is said, and to the virtue of the holy sign was attributed the final over- throw of the mighty pagan. Craco's sword, nearly eight feet in length, was removed some centuries later to Vienna, and Ratisbon lost a remarkable relic. On the wall of the house adjoining the tower on the Haidplatz the inn " zum Goldenen Kreuz " is a medallion of Ludwig the First with ornate decoration, and on the wall of the tower is another medallion with twenty- four lines of verse about a certain royal romance. The inscription appears to have been painted up recently, but whether replacing an older one I cannot say. It was to the charms of one Barbara Blomberg— who is said variously to have been landlady of the Golden Cross, a washerwoman and the daughter of a well-to-do citizen, that the Emperor Charles the Fifth succumbed during one of his visits to this part of his vast dominions. The story runs that Barbara was introduced to the Emperor that her singing might lessen the melancholy from which he suffered. On 24 February, 1545 the lady bore a son — tradition says in a room in this inn — who was to become known to fame as Bon John of Austria, and the victor of Lepanto. In the following year the S6 THE DANUBE Emperor closed the incident by marrying Barbara to one of his courtiers, and carried off the child to be brought up as befitted his high (but for some years unacknowledged) paternal origin. Among the other features are the many fountains in street and platz, notably the one in the Moltkeplatz, and the flower-decorated one opposite the western end of the cathedral. Just west of the bridge gate is another old stone fountain dated 1610. But of these details the interesting old city has much to show to the wanderer about its byways. Another thing which strikes the visitor is the way in which the chemists' shops retain such old signs as were at one time familiar features of our London streets, but which with us only survive on inns. IniRatisbon the " Apotheken " are duly named the " Elephant," the " Lion," the ** Eagle," and so on. Mention has been made of Kepler Strasse, and it should be added that the famous astronomer, John Kepler, was doubly associated with Ratisbon. Hither he came in 161 3 to appear before the Diet as the advocate of the introduction of the Gregorian Calendar into Germany — an introduction which was, however, delayed owing to anti-papal prejudice. Seventeen years later Kepler journeyed from Sagan in Silesia on horseback that he might appeal to the Diet for arrears of payment due to him. But, reaching Ratisbon, he fell ill of a fever, and died there on 15 November, 1630. We shall hear something of the astronomer again lower down the river at Linz. In this city of many ecclesiastical foundations the very horses are said to have been taken to church in past times, though, it is true, only once a year. On St. Leonard's Day — 6 November — the peasants from the surrounding country used to bring their horses, gaily bedecked, into the city and take them one at a time to peep into St. Leonard's church — " a pious precaution DONAUWORTH TO RATISBON 37 which was supposed to preserve them the year round from the staggers, and, indeed, every other disorder that horseflesh is heir to." When Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was here in 1 7 16, she described Ratisbon as being full of " Envoys from different States," and said that it might have been a very pleasant place but for the "important piques, which divide the town almost into as many parties as there are families . . . the foundation of these ever- lasting disputes turns entirely upon rank, place, and the title of Excellency, which they all pretend to, and, what is very hard, will give it to nobody. For my part I could not forbear advising them (for the public good) to give the title of Excellency to everybody, which would include the receiving it from everybody ; but the very mention of such a dishonourable peace was received with as much indignation, as Mrs. Blackaire did the motion of a reference." In some of the churches — she does not specify which — Lady Mary was shown some curious relics, for she says : " I have been to see the churches here and had the permission of touching the relics, which was never suffered in places where I was not known. I had, by this privilege, the oppor- tunity of making an observation, which I doubt not might have been made in all the other churches, that the emeralds and rubies which they show round their relics and images are most of them false ; though they tell you that many of the Crosses and Madonnas, set round with these stones, have been the gifts of Emperors and other great Princes. I don't doubt indeed but they were at first jewels of value ; but the good fathers have found it convenient to apply them to other uses, and the people are just as well satisfied with pieces of glass amongst these relics. They showed me a prodigious claw set in gold, which they called the claw of a Griffin, and I could not forbear asking the Reverend Priest that 38 THE DANUBE showed it whether the Griffin was a Saint. The question almost put him beside his gravity; but he answered they only kept it as a curiosity. I was much scanda- lized at a large silver image of the Truiity, where the Father is represented under the figure of a decrepit old man, holding in his arms the Son, fixed on the Cross, and the Holy Ghost, in the shape of a dove, hovering over him." History has so much to say of Ratisbon that here we can but glance at some of the details of a place which we are told has been known by twenty different names. In Germany it is Regensburg, the town situated at the point where the Regen joins the Danube, while we still know it by its old latinized name which has been said to indicate that it was recognized as a good landing-place. This point is explained in some Latin lines quoted by Planche : — " Inde Ratisbonae vetus ex hoc nomen habenti Quod bona sit ratibus, vel quod consuevit in ilia Ponere nauta rates!* In Roman times the town was known as Regina Castra and was probably one of the more important of the places along the frontier of Illyricum or those provinces of the Danube which, says Gibbon, were esteemed the most warlike of the empire. According to tradition it was the port at which many of the Western Crusaders commenced their voyage to the Holy Land, in evidence of which we have ballad testimony : — " There came a bold crusader With fifty harnessed men, And he's embarked at Ratisbon To fight the Saracen. This gallant knight, Sir Gottfried hight, Leads forth a noble band, Whose flag shall wave triumphantly In Judah's hallowed land." DONAUWORTH TO RATISBON 39 After the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, Ratisbon was by no means allowed to fall back into a centre of peace, for history tells us, as has been said, that fourteen times was it besieged during something less than a thousand years. In the Thirty Years' War its position made it a frequent storm centre, and thrice within eight years did it undergo bombardment. The wonder is that so much of the old place survives after such a record. The last of the fourteen attacks on it (21 April, 1809) is probably the best known, thanks to the mnemonic value of poetry, for it was then that the " Incident of the French Camp," of which Robert Browning wrote, is supposed to have occurred. " You know we French stormed Ratisbon : A mile or so away On a little mound, Napoleon Stood on our storming day. . . . Out 'twixt the battery smokes there flew A rider, bound on bound Full-galloping ; nor bridle drew Until he reached the mound. . . . ' Well,' cried he, ' Emperor, by God's grace We've got you Ratisbon ! The Marshal's in the market place, And you'll be there anon To see yoi r flag-bird flap his vans Where I, to heart's desire, Perched him ! ' The chiefs eyes flashed ; his plans Soared up again like fire. The chief's eye flashed ; but presently Softened itself, as sheathes A film the mother-eagle's eye When her bruised eaglet breathes : ' You're wounded ! ' * Nay,' his soldier's pride Touched to the quick, he said : ' I'm killed, Sire ! ' And his chief beside, Smiling the boy fell dead.'' Before leaving Ratisbon it may be recalled that it was here that Richard Cceur de Lion was sent as captive 40 THE DANUBE to the Emperor Henry the Sixth to be re-delivered to his captor and arch-foe Duke Leopold of Austria, who duly incarcerated him in a lonely Danube castle more than two hundred miles further down the river. Between six and seven miles below Ratisbon is the Walhalla, a modern building which no visitor to the ancient city should fail to see. It may be reached by the river, by the road which more or less closely follows the low right bank through the little village of Barbing, or by the light railway, the Valhallabahn, which starts in one of the Stadtamhof streets, crosses the Regen and runs between the low hills and the left bank of the river. The railway goes on to the Walhalla and beyond, but the temple can easily be reached from Donaustauf, a small town at the foot of the hill, on which stand the remains of a castle of the same name — ruins which, on a suitable day, afford a grand view, and to which attaches much history, and something of mystery. Through the long street of the village with its white houses is the way to the great Temple of Fame, but before visiting it, this ruined castle cresting the bluff rock above the town should be seen. The original castle built on this commanding point is supposed to have been founded by Bishop (afterwards Saint) Tuto, who died in 930, and whose tomb is at St. Emmeram's in Ratisbon. Whether it was founded by the saintly bishop or not, it was long used as the resi- dence of the bishops of Regensburg, though its strength and position caused it to be coveted by lay rulers also. Henry the Proud having in 1 132 taken it from the bishop of that day, the citizens of Regensburg not only besieged the castle, but actually succeeded in capturing it. It was besieged again in 1146 and yet again in 11 59. It is not easy, looking across the closely cultivated plain towards Regensburg, to-day to realize thescenesof those strenuous Middle Ages. In the fourteenth century Donaustauf was DONAUWORTH TO RATISBON 41 sold to Charles the Fourth of Bohemia, who maintained it as one of the barrier fortresses of his kingdom. Of the time when the castle was the residence of the bishops of Regensburg, and should seemingly have been a centre of Christian peace and charity there are accounts that indicate that it had under some possessors quite another reputation. Here, for example, is one of the stories : " A certain worthy Bishop of Regensburg, not con- tented with fleecing his flock, according to the approved and legitimate method, made it a point of conscience to waylay and plunder his beloved brethren whenever they ventured near the Castle of Donaustauf, in which he resided upon the banks of the Danube, a little below the town. In the month of November 1250," says the chronicle, "tidings came to Donaustauf, that, on the following morning, the daughter of Duke Albert of Saxony would pass that way, with a gorgeous and gallant escort. The bait was too tempting for the prelate. He sallied out upon the glittering cortege, and seizing the princess and forty of her noblest attendants, led them captives to Donaustauf. The astonished re- mainder fled for redress, some to King Conrad, and others to Duke Otho, at Landshut, who immediately took arms, and carrying fire and sword into the epis- copal territory, soon compelled the holy highwayman to make restitution and sue for mercy. Conrad, satis- fied with his submission, forgave him ; in return for which the bishop bribed a vassal, named Conrad Hohenfels, to murder his royal namesake ; and accord- ingly, in the night of the 28th of December, the traitor entered the Abbey of St. Emmerams, where the king had taken up his abode, and stealing into the royal chamber, stabbed the sleeper to the heart ; then running to the gates of the city, threw them open to the bishop and his retainers, exclaiming that the king was dead. 42 THE DANUBE The traitors were, however, disappointed. Frederick von Ewesheim, a devoted servant of the king, suspect- ing some evil, had persuaded the monarch to exchange clothes and chambers with him, and the assassin's dagger had pierced the heart, not of Conrad, but of his true and gallant officer. The bishop escaped the royal vengeance by flight ; but the abbot of St. Emmeram's, who had joined the conspirators, was flung into chains ; and the abbey, the houses of the chapter, and all the ecclesiastical residences, were plundered by the king's soldiery. The Pope, as might be expected, sided with the bishop and excommunicated Conrad and Otho ; but the murderer, Hohenfels, after having for some time eluded justice, was killed by a thunderbolt ! " Another prelate who resided here is reputed to have had the enviable power of being in two places at once. This was no less a personage than Albertus Magnus, who succeeded the highwayman-bishop in the episcopate of Ratisbon. According to the chronicles, Albertus was able, while delivering his lectures in the Dominican Chapel in Regensburg itself, also to be closely engaged in study in his palace at Donaustauf, some miles away. A case surely in which even the system of pluralism would have been thoroughly justified. Coming down from the peaceful ruins to the village again, we may take one of two ways to the Walhalla, going straight on to the east where the front of the giant Grecian temple is seen above the trees on the brow of the hill to the left, and climbing the many steps to the front ; or taking the left turning where the road forks, and going past the little hillside church of St. Salvator — built, it is said, in expiation of the sacrilegious crime of some soldiers, who dis- honoured the Host — through woodland paths reach the western columned side of the great edifice, and come more or less suddenly on what is, if the weather 'JHK WALHAl.J.A DONAUWORTH TO RATISBON 43 be clear, a grand "surprise" view. Behind us the oak woodland, in front the magnificent Parthenon-like white building, standing on the brow of the hill — "A sumptuous frontispiece appeared On Doric pillars of white marble reared." And to the right, green and turf and a view across the Bavarian plain. On a fine day the view is one to arrest the attention, while the grand building with its columned exterior is so satisfying to the eye, that we may well feel inclined to linger about before entering the great hall. Approaching from the back, we pass under the arcade of columns to the front, where massy tiers of steps lead down the hill to the river. From the front here is a magnificent view if kindly weather prevails — its extent could be gauged even on such a grey wet day as that on which I visited it. The building stands three hundred and fifteen feet above the river — not in itself a great height — but the southern bank is the beginning of a great far-stretching plain, and it is said that, in the most favourable climatic conditions (which so rarely obtain in such cases) the distant Alps can be seen. Even if it fall short of that, the view is sufficiently extensive across the plain, back to Ratisbon and down the winding stream, island-divided, towards Straubing. Before entering this Temple of Fame — more impressive than that imagined by Pope — it may be mentioned that the building was founded for the purpose which its name sufficiently attests, by Ludwig the First of Bavaria, owing to the great pleasure which he had had when studying at Jena in the society of Goethe. It is said that he then declared that if he ever succeeded to the throne he would erect a building which should serve as a Temple of Fame for the whole of Germany. Nobly did he fulfil that promise. The 44 THE DANUBE architect was Leo von Klenze ; the first stone was laid on October i8, by King Ludwig ; and on the same date, twelve years later, the temple was solemnly dedicated by his Majesty, who said : " May the Walhalla contribute to extend and consolidate the feelings of German nationality. May all Germans of every race henceforth feel they have a common country of which they may be proud, and let each individual labour according to his faculties to promote its glory." It had cost about two hundred thousand pounds, and thus honouring the great men of the German lands, the Bavarian king gained lasting honour for himself, for the building is one as perfect in taste as it is in form, to use the words of an early visitor. It is true that there have not been wanting critics who have objected to the incongruity of building a temple after a Greek plan to the honour of great Teutons and then naming it the Walhalla, but the objection is really an unimportant one, and we may well be satisfied with having a beautiful edifice dedicated to a beautiful purpose : we may remind the critics, too, that " the Doric order was peculiarly sacred to heroes and worthies." Entering, we find ourselves in a grand and impressive hall : " Here fabled Chiefs, in darker ages born. Or Worthies old, whom arms or arts adorn, Who cities raised, or tamed a monstrous race ; The walls in venerable order grace : Heroes in animated marble frown, And Legislators seem to think in stone !" The interior is a magnificent hall — of nearly the same dimensions as the Parthenon — with walls of ruddy- tinted marble ; the floor of marble mosaic ; the roof, brilliant blue and star-spangled, strikes a note a little out of keeping with the general severity of the rest. There are sculptured Victories and Valkyries, and a frieze representing, in sculptured relief by Martin Wagner, DONAUWORTH TO RATISBON 45 something of the history of the German race before the coming of Christianity, while high around the walls are a series of marble tablets bearing the names of those worthy a place in the Temple of German Fame, but of whom no authentic portraits have come down to us. Indeed, even those of great achievement, whose names have not come down to us are not forgotten, for three of these tablets commemorate the author of the "Nibelungen Lied," and the builder of Cologne cathedral. Other tablets serve to remind us that Tennyson but stated a truth when in compliment to Queen Alexandra he said, " Saxon, Norman and Dane are we," for here among the heroes of the Germanic Temple of Fame, we shall find the names of King Egbert, of Alfred the Great, of Hengist and Horsa, even that of the Venerable Bede. At the further end of the hall is a seated statue of King Ludwig, and ranged along the walls are more than a hundred busts, many of them very fine examples of modern sculpture. The latest addition, Von Moltke (added in 1909), is particularly good. The bust of Bismarck, which was placed in Walhalla in 1908, on the sixty-sixth anniversary of the opening, is also admirable. There is about the whole so much excellence as to suggest that the Temple in addition to fostering national feeling should prove an encouragement of the sculptor's art, for next to the honour of winning a place in the Walhalla must be the distinction of contributing to the work there permanently placed. From the programme which I picked up in the " oaken wood " at the back of the building two years after the event, we may gather from the ceremonies at a students' " homage " paid to Bismarck here, a few days after the bust was placed in position, some idea of the ceremony, which presumably attends the dedication of a new entrant among the " Walhalla comrades." The programme runs as follows : 4.6 THE DANUBE HOMAGE Of the Society of German students before the bust of Prince Bismarck in the Walhalla on the 7th November, 1908, at 4 in the afternoon. Programme Coronation March from the Opera, " Die Folkunger," by F. Kretschmar, for string quintet and harp. Entry of the Deputation. The " Bismarck Hymn,'' written by Dr. Raimund Geister, composed by Georg Meyer. Sung by the " Regensburger Liederkranz " under the leadership of their choirmaster Herr G. Meyer. Dedicatory Address delivered by Professor Sponsel, President of the Union of all Student Societies. " Keep watch, it's nearly day," from " The Meistersinger of Nuremburg " by Richard Wagner, for string quintet and harp. Exit of the Deputation. The music by the Band of the Royal Bavarian nth Regiment under the direction of the Conductor, Herr Kleiber. Harp : Fraulein Langhammer of the Municipal Theatre Orchestra. THE BISMARCK HYMN* Written by Dr. Raimund Geister, composed by Georg Meyer. The German Temple of Honour stands On a mountain by the Danube. Those who high from 'mid^the German people rise Dwell there within that dome. It was built by the Royal architect Who with oak bordered it round — The honoured German king who yonder Among his comrades dreams. * The translation gives no more than a rough rendering to the meaning of the verses. DONAUWORTH TO RATISBON 47 Walhalla's comrades, hear ye not Sounds from among the oaken wood ? Triumphant through the mist cloud breaks The golden sunshine. With heavy step a hero draws near. It thrills my very blood Where is in Germany a man In high spirit resembling him ? Comrades, what you yourselves look for The Norns to us deny, What I in my young breast conceived — Bismarck, thou hast dared : An united people, an united Empire, The deed is colossal ! Bismarck that was young Siegfried's stroke. Hail to thee, Walhalla comrade ! " Later the company joined in singing the national song, " Deutschland, Deutschland, iiber Alles." Before turning from the beautiful temple of honour, the statuary groups on the northern and southern pedi- ments should be examined. That on the north end represents Armin (or Herman) with his Germans fighting the Romans, while that on the south, symbolizing the regaining of German liberty after the battle of Leipzig in 1813, shows "Germania" seated and attended by male and female figures representing the Germanic states and the rivers Rhine and Moselle. Beautiful as is the view from the front of the Walhalla, it must be said that the place is more impres- sive if approached from the back than by the great flights of massy stone steps which occupy a goodly part of the hillside from the front. The extent and arrangement of these in alternate twin flights, now bifurcating and now meeting, detract somewhat from the impressiveness of the whole as seen from the river front. But the whole thing represents a grand idea grandly realized, and it is easy to believe that from whatever part of the 48 THE DANUBE German empire visitors come, they realize here the unity of their race and the greatness of their destiny. To render boldly a few anonymous lines quoted in the " Beschreibung der Walhalla " — the little souvenir guide to be bought there — Germania's furthest sons, Your valiant fathers yearn That the blood in your veins May mount higher, quicker flow. When the sound of joyous singing Mightily at Walhall's ringing. CHAPTER III RATISBON TO PASSAU " On one side far the fruitful plain extends ; The other's wooded steeps, Around the base of which in sinuous bends The Danube grandly sweeps." From the German FROM the Walhalla we have a gh'mpse of the kind of country through which for many miles the Danube winds its tortuous length. On the left bank are generally the lower hills of the Bayerischer Wald, though for a part of the way these recede to some distance ; on the right, " low sedgy and Dutch like," is an almost unbroken plain extending far to the south. This plain is now well cultivated, and here and there is broken by groups of farm buildings, by small villages consisting frequently of but a few houses (many of them with wooden balconies like those of typical chalets) dominated by white churches, the warm red minaret-like steeples of which — " Little Kremlin-looking cupolas " one visitor has termed them — form a notable feature in the landscape. On this plain we have great stretches of various crops merging the one into the other without any hedges or other division. Cattle may be seen ploughing the fields, and perchance a man sauntering along a road driving a couple of pigs — a cord from the right hind leg of one to the left hind leg of the other, each thus checking the other's wanderings. E 49 50 THE DANUBE Along the ever-winding river on either bank are occasional villages, but there is no place of special interest for some distance along the stream, which here and there almost doubles upon itself, and here and there receives the water of some small tributary. At Worth, on the left bank — to which point the Walhalla railway runs — used to be a palace of the bishops of Ratisbon, later a residence of the Princes of Thurn and Taxis. Beyond Worth the country on the left also becomes flat. The great plain of Bavaria is known as the Dunkel- boden (dark soil) and also as the granary of Bavaria, from the nature of its rich cultivable earth. It is suggested that this was once a great morass — it may perhaps be the bed of some ancient lake. In the days when education was a luxury reserved for the few, the words Bauern von Dunkelboden, or peasants of the dark soil, were used as a term synonymous with boor. Sossau, a village on the left bank as we approach Straubing, is chiefly remarkable for a miracle that is supposed to have happened in the year 1534, when a picture of the Virgin was brought thither by angels. The story runs that the picture was originally in another church in a village where the Lutheran doctrine had been adopted, and that angels took it by boat up the Danube and deposited it at Sossau as a more orthodox place. Sossau belonged to the monks of Kloster Windberg, and they were duly authorized to publish an account of the miracle, and for the benefit of those who could not read a pictorial representation of the transporting of the picture was duly painted on the the walls of their monastery at Straubing. Straubing is an interesting old place on the right bank of a right arm of the Danube, which some distance before reaching the town forks round a large island. It is said of the people that they "ploughed the RATISBON TO PASSAU 51 Danube," because they dammed up the old bed of the river and so diverted the stream so that it should flow directly by their walls — in proof of which the town arms are decorated with a plough. It is, as has been said, an old town — it has indeed been identified by some historians as Castra Augustana one of the many Danu- bian stations of the Romans. There are a number of picturesque old buildings, including the tall quadrangular turreted Town Tower, erected early in the fourteenth century. The Gothic churches have notable monuments and stained glass, and in the graveyard of St. Peter's on the high bank to the east is a chapel to which a romantic and tragical story belongs. This is the Agnes Bernauer Chapel, the name of which is that of a girl who loved too well but not wisely, seeing that she was of humble origin and her lover was heir to the Dukedom of Bavaria. The story may be borrowed from Planche who declared that he doted upon old stories. "Albert, the only son of Duke Ernst of Bavaria, was one of the most accomplished and valiant princes of the age he lived in. His father and family had selected for his bride the young Countess Elizabeth of Wiirtemberg. The contract was signed and the marriage on the point of taking place, when the lady suddenly eloped with a more favoured lover — John, Count of Werdenberg. The tidings were brought to Albert at Augsburg, where he was attending a grand tournament given in honour of the approaching nuptials ; but they fell unheeded on his ear, as his heart, which had not been consulted in the choice of his bride, had just yielded itself, ' rescue or no rescue,' to the bright eyes of a young maiden whom he had distinguished from the crowd of beauties that graced the lists. Virtuous as she was lovely, Agnes Bernauer, had obtained amongst the citizens of Augsburg, the appellation of ' the angel ' ; 52 THE DANUBE but she was the daughter of a bather, an employment considered at that period, in Germany, as particularly dishonourable. Regardless of consequences, however, he divulged his passion, and their marriage was shortly afterwards privately celebrated in Albert's castle at Vohberg. Their happiness was doomed to be of short duration. Duke Ernst became possessed of their secret, and the anger of the whole house of Munich burst upon the heads of the devoted couple. Albert was commanded to sign a divorce from Agnes, and prepare immediately to marry Ann, daughter of Duke Erich of Brunswick. The indignant prince refused to obey, and being after- wards denied admission to a tournament at Regensburg, on the plea of his having contracted a dishonourable alliance, he rode boldly into the lists upon the Heide Platz, before the whole company declared Agnes his lawful wife and duchess, and conducted her to his palace at Straubing, attended as became her rank. Every species of malice and misrepresentation was now set at work to ruin the unfortunate Agnes. Albert's uncle, Duke V/ilhelm, who was the only one of the family, inclined to protect her, had a sickly child, and she was accused of having administered poison to it. But the duke detected the falsehood and became more firmly her friend. Death too soon deprived her of this noble protector, and the fate of the poor duchess was immedi- ately sealed. Taking advantage of Albert's absence from Straubing, the authorities of the place arrested her on some frivolous pretext, and the honest indignation with which she asserted her innocence was tortured into treason by her malignant judges. She was condemned to die, and on Wednesday, I2 October, 1436, was thrown over the bridge into the Danube, amidst the lamentations of the populace. Having succeeded in freeing one foot from the bonds which surrounded her, the poor victim, shrieking for help and mercy, RATISBON TO PASSAU 53 endeavoured to reach the bank by swimming, and had nearly effected a landing, when a barbarian in office, with a hooked pole, caught her by her long fair hair, and dragging her back into the stream, kept her under water until the cruel tragedy was completed. The fury and despair of Albert on receiving these horrid tidings were boundless. He flew to his father's bitterest enemy, Louis the Bearded, at Ingolstadt, and returned at the head of a hostile army to his native land, breathing vengeance against the murderers of his beloved wife. The old duke, sorely pressed by the arms of his injured son, and tormented by the stings of conscience, implored the mediation of the Emperor Sigismund, who succeeded after some time in pacifying Albert, and reconciling him to his father, who, as a proof of his repentance, instituted a perpetual mass for the soul of the martyred Agnes Bernauer." The bridge from which this terrible tragedy — one of the most terrible of the many recorded in the annals of the Danube — took place no longer exists. The date 1436 on the tomb of the murdered Agnes is supposed to be an error, as her husband married Ann of Brunswick in that year. The present bridge connecting the island with the town is of later date. The island, known as Donauwiese (or Danube Meadow) was at one time the annual scene of an eight-day's fair— known as the Sossau Fair — beginning on the Sunday after Michaelmas. The good folk of Straubing do not seem in the Middle Ages to have been particularly intelligent, for about forty years before the tragedy just chronicled the town was destroyed by fire, and as this originated in a joiner's shop, no joiner was permitted to reside in the place afterwards ; and this regulation was maintained for about a century and a half! The wisdom shown seems to have been similar to that of the Hamelin folk, who would listen to no itinerant musicians after the Pied 54 THE D7\NUBE Piper had (in consequence of their own municipal meanness) spirited away their children. Like so many other towns that we shall have to visit, Straubing had to bear the brunt of much fighting in the olden times. In 1332 it was besieged for about six weeks by the Bavarians (having been taken by the Austrians about a dozen years earlier) before being captured. In 1663 it had again to stand a severe siege when attacked by the Duke of Saxe-Weimar ; and on that occasion the burgomaster of the town, a noted marksman, himself shot upwards of thirty of the duke's best officers. In 1704 it was again taken by the Austrians. Possibly the reputation of Burgomaster Holler's marksmanship saved the place from being one of the scenes of fighting in the Napoleonic wars. The Gothic castle — long since converted into barracks — was built in 1356 by Duke William of Bavaria who had married an English princess. On the south side of the castle is a portrait-memorial to a distinguished native of Straubing, Joseph von Fraunhofer (1787- 1826) a cele- brated optician. Fraunhofer, the son of a poor glazier, being left an orphan when young, was apprenticed to a glass polisher, and when fourteen years of age nearly lost his life, but the accident was indirectly the means which led him to success. On 21 July, 1801 the house in which he was lodging fell down and, fortunately for the poor lad, at the moment that he was being extricated from the ruins, the Elector Maximilian Joseph happened to be passing, and salved his wounds with a present of money which enabled him to obtain release from the last few months of his apprenticeship and to purchase a glass-polishing machine for himself, and so to start upon a distinguished career of study and invention. North-east of Straubing — in which general direction the devious river flows for some distance — is to be seen the pyramidal Bogenberg about half a dozen miles RATISBON TO PASSAU 55 away. Before reaching it, however, the river receives some further of the many small tributaries that flow down from the Wald, and passes several pleasant, but not otherwise remarkable villages, notably, where the little Aitrach comes in from the south, the triplet-village of Unter-, Mittel-, and Ober-Qbling. The beautiful hills are here again closer to the river on the left, while the plain on the right becomes more diversified. The first place of interest is found shortly before the point at which the railway from Straubing crosses the Danube to Bogen, where on the left stand the conspicuous buildings of the ancient Benedictine monastery of Ober-Altaich. So many were the Benedictine establish- ments along this river that Schultes, in his " Handbuch fur Reisende auf der Donau," published nearly a century ago, coming to describe one of them wrote : " * So soon another ! ' I think I hear the traveller and the reader exclaim, who may not be acquainted with the magnitude of this Order." And he then goes on to summarize thus, in a way to delight those with a taste for statistical tit-bits, the number of notables who had belonged to the Benedictine Order up to the time of Hemmauer: "Sixty-three popes, two hundred and twenty-three cardinals, two hundred and fifty-five patriarchs, sixteen thousand archbishops, forty -six thousand bishops, twenty-one emperors, twenty-five empresses, forty-eight kings, fifty-four queens, one hundred and forty-six imperial and royal children, and four hundred and forty- five sovereign princes and dukes." The " Kloster " of Ober-Altaich was first founded in the eighth century by a duke who brought Benedictines from Reichenau to people it, and it was built where a chapel had been erected earlier by " the Holy Parminius." Here, still earlier, had stood a Druidical altar, and Par- minius, having destroyed it and with his own hands cut down its sheltering oak, built the chapel which was 56 THE DANUBE succeeded by the first Kloster. That was destroyed by the Hungarians in 907, and a couple of centuries passed before it was rebuilt by the Count of Bogen and started on a long period of continuous prosperity. When the Thirty Years' War was devastating so much of the Continent, Ober-Altaich was not spared, for in 1634 it was destroyed by the Swedes, only to rise, phcenix-like, more splendid than before, thanks to the wealth possessed by the monks. The fresco-paintings in the monastery church illustrate the old-time feeling against Lutheranism, for " monks are drawn exorcising Straubing, and Luther is seen running away in the shape of an unclean spirit, riding on a hog, with the Bible under his arm, a sausage in one hand, and a beer glass in the other." Beyond the railway bridge is seen the Bogenberg at the foot of which is the pleasant village of Bogen. On the top of the 'berg is an old pilgrimage church, erected in consequence of one of the various miracles that belong to the neighbourhood, and the ruins of a castle, at one time the seat of one of those robber-nobles who must have made travelling in these parts a terrible thing in the olden days. To Sossau we have seen — and with the particularity of a date not often attached to such happenings — a picture was brought by angels ; to Bogen there floated, upstream, on the waters of the Danube a hollow stone image of the Virgin. Here it grounded, and the hill-top chapel was duly built to house it, and in course of time became famous as a pilgrimage church. Sometimes, it is recorded, as many as eight thousand pilgrims at a time have journeyed to Our Lady of Bogen. Owing to its exposed position — the hill-top is nearly four hundred feet above the river —the church has often been damaged by storm, and once when it was crowded with pilgrims. This was on Whit Tuesday, 16 18, when the tower was struck by RATISBON TO PASSAU 57 lightning, and the congregation, in the panic that ensued, crushed several of their number to death. wEmilius Hemmauer, a prior of Ober-Altaich, who recorded the tragedy in verse, describes how — " In one thousand six hundred and eighteen, On the third day of Whitsun near midnight." when the church was closely crowded the tower was struck and fell in ; two people were killed outright, and in the subsequent struggle — " The great force crushed without sparing Four men and ten women. There lay ye in two graves, dead. Three men, seven women ; console ye, God." The account is not very explicit ; presumably one of the men and three of the women recovered. The ruins of the castle which once proudly dominated the hill-top speak of a past when the lords of Bogen were possessors of the country north of the Danube from the Regen to the Ilz and far up into Bohemia ; when they were welcomed as allies, and feared as enemies, by the monarchs of near-by principalities. In the Middle Ages there seem to have been periods of terrible lawlessness in the various German states, and the nobles whose castled homes were perched on the crags bordering the great rivers, the Rhine and the Danube, appear to have been some of the most lawless people of the time. " The terms noble and robber were synonymous, and the higher the rank the more lawless and rapacious were the deeds of the titled ruffian. The castle of Bogen was admirably adapted for a bandit's hold. Seated upon the apex of a pyramidical rock, inaccessible but by one narrow pass on its eastern side, which a handful of determined men might keep against a host, and commanding a view over nearly half the dukedom of Bavaria, its lawless lord watched from its 58 THE Dx^NUBE battlements, like a vulture, the approach of his unsus- pecting prey, and, pouncing upon it, bore it up in triumph to his mountain aerie, where he feasted at his leisure in security." The miraculous arrival of the stone figure of the Virgin at Bogen made the Count of that day repent somewhat of his evil ways and, possibly on receiving a hint as to the best way of cancelling some of his sins, presented this castle on the Bogenberg to the monks of Ober-Altaich ; having done what they would on the earth, it may have appeared prudent to seek to ensure a comfortable reception in heaven. The Counts of Bogen seem to have married women well fitted to be their mates, if we may judge by the story that is told of the mother of the last of these nobles — the family became extinct about the middle of the thirteenth century. This lady was Ludmilla, a Bohemian princess, who had married Count Albert the Third of Bogen. After the death of her husband, Duke Louis the Second of Bavaria heard so much about Ludmilla that he offered her marriage, but, like a shrewd man, knowing the unveracity of Rumour, and her sister Report, he made the offer conditional upon his liking her when they became personally acquainted. In other words he expressed a desire to meet the Countess "with a view to matrimony." The lady agreed to the terms, and duly received her ducal visitor and prospective suitor. Doubtful as to the impression that she had really made upon him, and suspicious of the sincerity of her wooer, she one day, in seeming play- fulness, suggested that they should plight their troth in the tapestried chamber in which they happened to be, and that the three knights figured in the tapestry might be regarded as witnesses. The Duke, unsuspecting any trick, humoured the apparently playful widow, and took the oath required of him — and on the instant three living knights stepped out from behind the hangings, RATISBON TO PASSAU 59 and compelled him to ratify his pledge ! Had Duke Louis but suspected that there was a " a rat i' the arras," the story might have had another ending. A little beyond Bogen the Danube trends in a southerly direction, and once more the hills of the Wald recede for a time, though after a few miles the stream turns again towards the mountains, the wooded heights of which are never many miles away from the left bank. Among the villages along the banks, Wischelburg is worthy of mention as being the modern representative of the Roman Bisonium destroyed by Attila and his Huns. As the river nears Deggendorf, there is on the right bank the Natternberg, an isolated hill nearly three hundred feet above the river, and notable as the first hill of any size that has broken the plain for many miles — eighty, says one stickler for the definite — on that side of the river. The great mass of granite certainly seems to belong more fittingly to the north side, and if geologists fail to explain its state of splendid isolation on the south, folk-lore is more resourceful. The legend runs that the devil, having a grudge against the too- good people of Deggendorf, brought this little hill all the way from Italy for the purpose of destroying the town. Having reached the south side of the Danube with his burden, he heard the ringing of the Ave Maria bell at the monastery on the other side of the river, and so was compelled to drop it just short of the mark.* On the top of the Natternberg are the ruins of an old castle, never restored after its destruction by the triumphing Swedes during the Thirty Years' War. * A similar story belongs to Kent, for it is said that the devil, wishing to destroy the city of Canterbury, took a great part of it up intending to drop it in the sea, but just as he reached the shore, he heard the ringing of the cathedral bell, and had to drop his load, and so instead of destroying the city of Canterbury, he started the town of Whitstable. 6o THE DANUBE Another similar legend of this part of the Danube concerns a large flotilla carrying crusaders towards the Holy Land, a sight which so enraged the devil " that he plucked up rocks from the neighbouring cliffs, and pitched them right into the channel of the river, thereby hoping to arrest their progress. But in this he was completely deceived ; for after the first rock came plunging down amongst them, every man made the sign of the cross, and uniting their voices in a holy anthem, the fiend was instantly paralysed, and slunk away without further resistance. So huge, however, was the first stone which he threw, that for ages it caused a swirl and swell in this part of the river, which nothing but the skill and perseverance of Bavarian engineers could remove." At the riverside foot of the Natternberg, is the village of Fischerdorf, and across the stream, beautifully situated, is Deggendorf, backed, as it were, by terraced hills, each semicircle rising higher than that in front. These mountains of the Bayerischer Wald, which rise at their highest to nearly five thousand feet, are still largely covered with forests in which pine and beech are the preponderating trees. Kloster-Metten, the ringing of the bells at which caused the devil to drop the Natternberg, and so saved Deggendorf from destruction, is on the left bank where the Unternbach joins the Danube. The monastery owes its origin, says legendary lore, to the following series of strange occurrences. A herdsman, belonging to the village of Michaelbuch, Gamelbert by name, having been sleeping for some time under a tree, awakened to find that a book was lying on his breast. This book was written in English, of which language the simple herdsman was, of course, wholly ignorant, but, neverthe- less, he at once began reading it, and, reading it, was so greatly edified, that abandoning his simple labour as RATISBON TO PASSAU 6i herdsman, he journeyed to Rome and became a priest. On his way he baptized a boy named Utto, desiring that when he became a man the lad should seek him out. This in due time Utto did, when Gamelbert made him priest of Michaelbuch ; but Utto did not care for his new task, and so, deserting his flock, he crossed the river and wandered into the woods, and there — close to a spring since known as Utto's spring — built a hermitage which he dedicated to the Archangel Michael. It came to pass that the mighty Emperor Charle- magne hunting in the neighbourhood discovered the holy hermit engaged in the curious whim of hanging his axe upon a sunbeam ! Astonished greatly by what he saw, and recognizing in it proof of Utto's holiness, the emperor offered to grant the hermit any request that he might prefer. Utto asked that a convent might be built, and Kloster-Metten was in due course erected in fulfilment of Charlemagne's promise. Those who arc inclined to be sceptical can see the monastery, can visit the spiing and the little church of Uttobrunn near by ! If these do not persuade them of the truth of the legend, they will, at least, readily admit that the beautiful wooded hills hereabouts, and the delightful mountain streams, form an appropriate setting for the mediaeval story. Deggendorf has the usual tale to tell of suffering during wars, indeed it suffered more than some of its neighbours, for not only was it partly destroyed by the Swedes, but much of what the enemy spared fire destroyed a few years later — including all the town records. But some good old buildings, including the Rathaus and a fourteenth-century pilgrimage church escaped destruction. This church is said to date from the year 1337, when a woman and some Jews were concerned in stealing and insulting the Host. Their efforts to destroy the consecrated wafer, by eating, by hammering on an anvil, and otlicr means were 62 THE DANUBE miraculously frustrated ; and when they flung it down a well, the well was immediately surrounded by a nimbus. However the story arose, the fanatical passions of the populace were aroused against the Jews, and a horrible indiscriminate massacre of those people took place, after which the miraculously preserved wafer was solemnly taken back to the church from which it had been stolen. The massacre took place on the day after that dedicated to St Michael and a century and a half later the Pope issued a Bull giving general absolution to those who paid a Michaelmas pilgrimage to the Gnaden-Kirche or Church of Grace. In consequence of that, many thousands of pilgrims annually visited — and I believe still visit — Deggendorf. A hundred years ago the pilgrims on one occasion are said to have numbered fifty thousand. Near to this pleasant old town of unpleasant memories are a number of " bergs " offering easy climbs and magnificent views up and down the Danube and over the Bayerischer and Bohmer Walder. Indeed there are not wanting enthusiasts who regard this as one of the most beautiful bits of the beautiful river. One feels so often tempted to say this while at a " bit " which is specially pleasing that such a summing up has really but little value. Beautiful indeed is much of the journey between here and Passau — to say nothing of the further beauties beyond — but to pick out the best would be difficult. Just below Deggendorf, comes in on the right another of those sixty navigable tributaries which, as Gibbon pointed out, go to swell the volume of the mighty river. This is the Isar, the river on which, some eighty miles away, stands Munich. Across the level land about the Isar's many mouths may be seen the spires of the old market town of Plattling — the last town upon that river. It is inevitable, when mentioning RATISBON TO PASSAU 6^ the Isar, that one should think of Campbell's " Hohen- linden," with its opening verse— " On Linden when the sun was low, All bloodless lay the untrodden snow, And dark as winter was the flow Of Iser, rolling rapidly." It has not much to do with the Danube, perhaps, but it may be pointed out here that Hohenlinden is about twenty miles as the crow flies from the nearest point on the Isar, and that the river nearest the battlefield is the Isen. Either Campbell misspelt the name of the river and was a little " out " in his geography, or else his printers made Isen into Iser — and since then the misprint has been generally adopted. The poet's sojourn in Bavaria in the year 1800, was indeed fruitful of several verses besides the famous " Hohenlinden," which was written after his return to London, while three years earlier he had written " The Wounded Hussar " a piece of mechanical romanticism which was at one time widely popular — " Alone to the banks of the dark rolling Danube Fair Adelaide hied when the battle was o'er : ' Oh, whither,' she cried, ' hast thou wandered, my lover ? Or here dost thou welter and bleed on the shore ? " Where the Isar joins the Danube we may more fittingly recall the poet's " Song translated from the German." " Sweet Iser ! were the sunny realm And flowery gardens mine, Thy waters I would shade with elm To prop the tender vine ; My golden flagons I would fill With rosy draughts from every hill ; And under every myrtle bower My gay companions should prolong The laugh, the revel, and the song, To many an idle hour. 64 THE DANUBE Like rivers crimsoned with the beam Of yonder planet bright Our bahny cups should ever stream Profusion of delight ; No care should touch the mellow heart, And sad or sober none depart ; For wine can triumph over woe, And love and Bacchus brother powers Could build in Iser's sunny bowers A paradise below." About this bit of the Danube there are a number of islands caused by the small branches of the Isar where it reaches the greater river. Still with the beautiful hills on the left and the plain on the right, the river goes on past small villages and hamlets. The next place with an arresting story is Nieder-Altaich, the site of another Benedictine monastery, and that at one time the most important of all which this powerful Order held in Bavaria. Here St. Parminius went through the same performance as at Ober-Altaich — destroying a Druid altar and cutting down its sheltering oak with his own hands — and here, also as at the other place, came the destroying Hungarians in the tenth century. The Benedictines showed again their great recuperative power, for the monastery was rebuilt and re-endowed before the close of the same century. Hither came St. Gotthard (born at Reichersdorf in 965) as a bare- foot candidate for a monk's cell ; here he rose to be abbot, until he was transferred as bishop to Hildesheim, where he died in 1035. Two and a half centuries later the monastery seems to have had a less worthy head, for it is said that in the year 1232, the monks of Nieder-Altaich lay in ambush and shot their abbot with arrows as he was crossing to Thundorf on the other side of the river. The chronicles of the place have to tell of another unpopular abbot — one, however, who was removed from RATISBON TO PASSAU 65 the post in a less drastic fashion, for in an old Bavarian history there is record of an abbot of Nieder-Altaich who seems to have interpreted the rules of the Bene- dictine Order in a very liberal fashion, so far as he himself was concerned : " Besides his valet he had two pages. On his name-day all the principal persons of the government of Straubing assembled in the grand refectory of Nieder-Altaich. A band of trumpets and kettle-drums was in attendance from daybreak, facing his chamber window, and the moment his Excellency (for he had purchased the title of a privy councillor) opened his eyes, the pages undrew the curtains of cloth of gold, amidst a flourish from the trumpets and kettle- drums without, while a battery of small mortars pro- claimed in thunder to the surrounding country, the dawning of the name-day of this important personage." It is said that not only did this worthy spend upwards of ninety thousand florins a year, but when he was made to retire he had run his monastery into a debt of over a hundred thousand florins. In his retirement he was reduced to an annuity of two hundred ducats. This abbot may well have thought that he was only ordering his life in a manner befitting the head of so magnificent an establishment, for it is recorded that ten times was the " Kloster " burnt down, and each succes- sive destruction was only made the occasion for rebuild- ing it more splendidly than before, until " the very oxen of the community eat out of marble mangers." It is, perhaps, not surprising to find that this worthy was one of the last of the abbots of Nieder-Altaich. The winding river goes by village after village, with here and there fresh ruins testifying to the past im- portance of the natural frontier aff"orded by the Danube. Inland, on the left, is the old castle of Hengersberg, said to have belonged to a medic-eval St. Maurice, who is not to be confused with the Theban Christian martyred V 66 THE DANUBE with his legion by the orders of that Caesar whom he sought to serve. Where the stream takes a short semi- circular bend to the south, a little way inland, on a low hillside, is Osterhofen, which is described as one of the oldest towns in Bavaria and the Castra Petrensia of the Romans, where a notable victory was won over the long-victorious Avars, who, introduced by Rome to Europe as allies, remained to be a standing menace to the Roman power. These Avars, who seem finally to have merged in the Huns, are described as at first appearing at Constantinople with their long hair hang- ing in tresses down their backs, and the description suggests that the gipsies to be met lower down the Danube may be their descendants. The defeat of the Avars at Osterhofen is said to have happened upon an Easter Sunday — in consequence of which the town gained its present name and right to bear a paschal lamb as its insignia. In the Oster-Wiese — or Easter Meadow — on which the battle was won, that Duke Uttilo, who had founded the monasteries of Ober- and Nieder-Altaich, is said to have erected yet another Benedictine monastery — only to have it destroyed by the vengeance-seeking Avars in 765. Bending north again from Osterhofen the river soon reaches Winzer, with the ruins of a castle reduced to their present state by " the whiskered Pandoors and the fierce hussars " of Maria Theresa in 1741. At Hofkir- chen, also on the left, we reach the ruined castle of another of those families of robber barons who were a law unto themselves, for Hofkirchen was the seat of the Counts of Ortenburg renowned as the persistent enemies of the Counts of Bogen, whose ruined place the Danube passed some distance to the west, and who were, as well, a standing danger to those who went down the Danube in boats. The quarrels between Bogen and Ortenburg were not of the kind of falling out among RATISBON TO PASSAU (>y thieves by which honest men come to their own, for the Counts of Ortenburg seem, indeed, to have been some of the most notorious of the powerful nobles who from their strongholds on the Danube enforced the predatory laws which they themselves enacted. Among their ingenuities, they devised or interpreted in their own fashion the " right " of " grundwehr," by which any vessel that grounded anywhere within their domain became confiscated, with all its cargo and crew. It had but to grate the sand or brush the shore, to touch in passing any island bank or shoal, to be captured by the Count's henchmen, who were ever on the watch. It is even said that these same henchmen did not scruple to chase any passing boat until they forced it to ground, and so could establish a " rightful " claim to it and all it contained ! Well might Froissart say of the German barons of old " they are people worse than Saracens or Paynims ; for their excessive covetousness quencheth the knowledge of honour." On the right bank, a little inland on the rising ground, where the little Angerbach nears the Danube, is Kinzing or Kiinzing, another link with the Rome of old ; for in place of its present short name is said to have been the earlier one of Castra Quintana or Augusta Quintanorum Colonia. Here is said to have lived in the fifth century a hermit saint, Severinus, though Gibbon makes that saint's dwelling place somewhere in Noricum, which was bounded on the west by the Inn and on the east by the Save. He is one of the two saints of this name, and is associated with the story of Odoacer, the first barbarian who was ruler of Italy on the downfall of the Western empire. "After the death of Odoacer's father, a leader of the Scyrri and officer of Attila's, the youth," says Gibbon, " led a wandering life among the barbarians of Noricum, with a mind and a fortune suited to the most desperate 68 THE DANUBE adventures ; and when he had fixed his choice, he piously visited the cell of Severinus, the popular saint of the country, to solicit his approbation and blessing. The lowness of the door would not admit the lofty stature of Odoacer : he was obliged to stoop ; but in that humble attitude the saint could discern the symptoms of his future greatness ; and addressing him in a prophetic tone, ' Pursue,' said he * your design ; proceed to Italy ; you will soon cast away this coarse garment of skins ; and your wealth will be adequate to the liberality of your mind.' " Among the miracles associated with the name of this St. Severinus is one that tells how in a time of flood he saved Kinzing from inundation by planting a cross on the Danube bank — succeeding by holiness and faith where mere pride, as in the case of Cnut, failed. Another of the saint's doings suggests that workers of miracles have sometimes performed but thankless tasks. Severinus had a great friend named Sylvin, and when Sylvin died, the body was laid in a little wooden church outside the walls of the town. Severinus, going to the church to mourn his friend, bethought to restore him to life, and the miracle was duly performed — to the great annoyance of Sylvin, who reproached the saint saying, " I beg of thee, I conjure thee, not to rouse me from the rest which God has appointed for me! Why hast thou awakened me ? Why hast thou brought me back into a world into which I never more wish to return ? " Whether the saint had his way and Sylvin lived on, or whether the revenant was allowed to die again forthwith, we are not told. The right bank of the Danube now begins to take on the more variedly picturesque beauty of the left as the ground becomes hillier. Pleinting, a small town, is passed on the right band — from which point the railway from Ratisbon keeps closely along the river to RATISBON TO PASSAU 69 Passau — and a little beyond on the left are the picturesque ruins of Hildegartsburg, " the hold of some robber knight, noble, or priest, of the Middle Ages" destroyed by the Duke of Austria as long ago as the middle of the fourteenth century. The next town, Vilshofen, which is on the right bank disputes with Osterhofen the claim to be considered as the Castra Quintana of the Romans. Here two streams the Vils and the Wolfbach empty themselves into the Danube, Though there is low-lying marshy land in the neighbour- hood, the low hills from the south are sensibly drawn in to meet those on the further bank and so to form a beautiful stretch of the river. Vilshofen like so many other of the places along the Danube, in the days when the making of history largely followed the course of the great rivers, was the scene of much fighting. It seems to have belonged to the Counts of Ortenburg, and thus to have been assured of such a fate. Here, in the fourteenth century, one Heinrich Tuschl founded a religious house for men. Having discovered his wife to be unfaithful to him, he revenged himself, not by any mere method of divorce, but by having her walled up alive ; and thereafter (it is not surprising to learn) he abjured the company and shunned the sight of women. When he died he left his property to build this place in Vilshofen and on the charter of it he wrote — "Zwei Hund an ain Bain Ich Tuschl bleib allain ; " or, "Two dogs to one bone ; I, Tuschl, stand alone." The canons of the place he thus founded bore the word " allain " on their arms, their clothes and their houses, and this, says Schultes, was latinized as " Solus cum sola." Beyond Vilshofen and on to Passau is a lovely stretch of the river, with wooded hills on cither side and 70 THE DANUBE occasional villages. The swift stream, here broken up by submerged rocks, " boils " and foams along in a manner that is seen again and again on the journey. At points where the disturbance is more particularly marked the hurrying waters receive some special name, until they reach the most remarkable manifestation of their brokenness at the world-famous Iron Gate. Below Vilshofen, near the village of Sandbach the troubled waters are known as " the terrible Sandbach " ; but as we see boats passing these places — among them being ferry boats taken by girls across the swirling waters — the terror is more in seeming than in reality, when experience and care are employed in navigation. Indeed the temerarious Englishmen who took out the " Water Lily " said that they found nothing dreadful, nothing their shallow craft could not negotiate with ordinary care. As their chronicler wrote of this stretch of the river, which had been described to them as one of the bugbears of the Danube : " On we went alone, and found that it was just what we had expected, a most exceedingly dangerous place for a heavily laden boat, but by no means so for our little cockle-shell, that only drew a few inches of water; rocks were scattered about the bed of the river in every direction, some above water, and some below ; the white breakers surrounded us on every side ; we came rather unpleasantly near one, but with steady pulling, careful steering, and quick obedience to the word of command, we came safely through." Some way beyond " the terrible Sandbach " the road was cut more or less through the very rock right along the river side, and here is to be seen another of the Danube memorials in the form of a couchant lion on a pedestal placed upon a jutting rock above an inscription which records that the road was made by order of Maximilian Joseph, the first king of Bavaria. From near Heining — where a branch of the railway is carried RATISBON TO PASSAU 71 across the Danube, to the valley of the Ilz and the villages of the Wald — the towers of Mariahilf by Passau may be seen, and soon after the towers of Passau itself and the buildings on the high hills on the left bank to the north of the town. II THE AUSTRIAN DANUBE CHAPTER IV PASSAU TO LINZ " Romance and History, hand in hand Pass with us as we journey through the land Where rocky heights with ruined castles crowned Rise o'er the mighty stream." From the German THOUGH Passau is a Bavarian city, it may fittingly be taken as the starting point of the Austrian Danube, because the frontier is but a little way farther downstream, and it is here that the navigation of the Danube, so far as passengers are concerned, begins. It is a fascinating and beautiful old city, beautifully and even fascinatingly situated on a narrow, pointed peninsula formed by the confluence of the Inn with the Danube, for it is here that the stream that rises in the Engadine, after its long journey through the Tyrol and Upper Bavaria, reaches the great river of which it is a tributary. It is only fitting that it should be an attractive old town that is situated at such an important meeting of the waters, and it seems only fitting, too, that it should be a town of no inconsiderable importance both in history and in legend. But Passau has also a third river, for immediately opposite the tree-grown point of the peninsula the Ilz from the Bohmer Wald comes in appropriately between well-wooded hills. Passau itself, as has been said, is wonderfully situated on the long tongue of land on either side of which the waters of the Danube and of the Inn rush to their junction. The old town with its iron-shuttered houses 75 ^6 THE DANUBE and shops, its beautiful " grilles," its houses more or less terraced upon the rising ground between the rivers, its narrow and tortuous ways, is full of fascinating bits, and every short walk brings us in sight of one or other of the rivers and their widely different further banks. On the north is a steep, densely wooded hillside with picturesque red-tiled buildings, and to the right, at the mouth of the Ilz, is the small town of Ilzstad — a medley of gabled houses, many chalet-like with their wooden balconies, and mostly painted or weathered various soft tints of pink, mauve, green or yellow ; above is a simple church and the tree-grown hillside. The wooded Georgsberg and Sturmberg on the north side offer many attractive walks and, from the outlook tower above the group of buildings known as the Oberhaus, a grand view. Two bridges — to which a third is being added — connect the old town with this precipitous hill, while another crosses the Inn. Across the latter river — here nearly fifty yards wider than the Danube — which may well seem the more important, are lower green hills with, on the bank, another " suburb " of Passau named Innstadt, above which are to be seen the twin towers of the Mariahilf Chapel. Among the more notable of the " sights " which the city has to offer, first mention should perhaps be made of the massive-looking cathedral with its triple domes. Originally founded as early as the fifth century, it has been several times rebuilt — twice after destruction by fire. The central dome, choir and transept date from the fifteenth, but the main portion from the seventeenth century. To the west of the cathedral is the old Canon's Residence, on the site of an earlier building in which the Treaty of Passau was signed on 2 August, 1552 ; by that treaty the Lutherans were to be permitted the free exercise of their religion, so that the city of Passau occupies an important place in the history "> m. OliKRHAL'S AND N I Kl iKRH Al'S, I'ASSAU PASSAU TO LINZ Jj of liberal opinion and freedom of conscience. Yet it has also its memories of the terrors of intolerance ; for in the one-time palace of the bishops of Passau was a special dungeon in which is the Middle Ages all Jews found in the town were incarcerated and left to die of starvation, while other dungeons were later given over to the merciless stamping out of the "Anabaptists." To the east of the cathedral is the handsome Bishop's Palace with the ornate Wittelsbach Fountain in front. On the Danube side — near to where the steamers of the Donau Dampfschiffahrts Gesellschaft start — stands the old Rathaus, vvith a handsome modern clock- tower, within which the sight-seer may visit the town museum and see a series of paintings by Herr F. Wagner depicting scenes in the history of Passau. On the further side of the town is a grand old cone-roofed tower — known as the Inn Tower or Powder Tower — forming a picturesque feature in the river view. Above the wooded side of the Danube's left bank, the roofs and walls of the barrack-like Oberhaus are visible, dating from the early part of the thirteenth century, when it was built by a bishop as a fort to keep the people of Passau in becoming awe. From this a wall shows through the trees connecting it with the Niederhaus, a picturesque red-roofed group of buildings on the bank at the point where the Ilz runs into the Danube. The Oberhaus is a military prison, the Niederhaus was presented by the grateful townsfolk of Passau to the Munich artist Herr Wagner on the completion of his series of historical paintings in the Rathaus. The journey up the Ilz to Hals and beyond is said to be particularly beautiful. Innstadt, connected with Passau by a long iron bridge — though the old Roman Boisdurum — is mostly a modern place owing to its having been destroyed by fire during the Napole- onic wars. On the hill above it, is the pilgrimage 7?> THE DANUBE chapel of Mariahilf, to be reached by a long flight of steps — up which I believe pilgrims used to journey on their knees. The centre of the pilgrim's interest is a " miraculous " figure of the Virgin with the Infant Jesus at one breast, while from the other, out of a little silver pipe, flowed water to which, not unnaturally, the devout of old ascribed great virtues. From the top of the steps is to be had a grand view of the town and its two great rivers ; but indeed every eminence near affords such views in pleasing variety, and in each direction attractive excursions are to be made, so that Passau is not only a delightful place with a mediaeval atmosphere, but a capital centre from which to make excursions into the Bayerischer Wald and the Bohmer Wald. Passau was the Castra Batava of the Romans, and here probably a town has been ever since it was made a colony of Batavian veterans. For many centuries the place belonged to the bishops of Passau, so that the story of the city is largely a story of squabbles between the citizens and their episcopal lords. And it was not only Passau to which the bishops laid claim, but to a goodly extent of the surrounding country — downstream to beyond Linz and northwards far into the Wald. Their princely rule over the dominions only came to an end in 1802, It is said of one of these worthies that, despite his great revenues, he got into much debt, while in his affected contempt for pomps and vanities he had inscribed on the walls of his palace the line — " O Welt ! O bose Welt ! " (" O world ! O evil world ! ") To this it is said one of his officers added — " Wie iibel verzehrst Du des Hochstifts Geld ! " (" How ill consumeth thou the Chapter's gold ! ") Better it is to remember that bishop of Passau who, as uncle of Kriemhilda, met her, entertained her PASSAU TO LINZ 79 and speeded her on the way to her new kingdom. We saw that at Pforring the royal cavalcade from the Rhine reached the Danube and the next verses of the "Lay of the Nibelungs" tell how it reached Passau : " Thence rode they swiftly forward down through Bavarian land The people told the tidings of how a mickle band Of unknown guests were coming, nigh where a cloister still Doth stand, and where Inn river the Danube's flood doth fill. " Within the town of Passau there was a bishop's see. The hostels and the palace stood empty presently : To meet the guests men hied them on to Bavarian ground, Where Pilgerin the bishop the fair Kriemhilda found. " The warriors of the country no whit displeased were To see behind her coming so many ladies fair, Their eyes upon these daughters of noble knights did rest, Good lodging was provided for every noble guest. " The bishop into Passau, his niece beside him, rode ; And when among the burghers the news was noised abroad That coming was Kriemhilda, their prince's sister's child, Right gladly was she welcomed by all the merchant guild." Not only does a bishop of Passau thus play his small part in the wonderful epic of the Nibelungs, but to one of their number, it is said, we owe it that the poem was overwritten — that the legends on which it was based were rescued from oblivion. Says Planchc, " Pelegrin, or Pilgerin, Bishop of Passau, who died in 991, collected the then current legends of the Nibelungen, which he committed to writing in the favourite Latin tongue, with the assistance of his scribe, Conrad, whose name has occasioned the Swabian poems to be sometimes ascribed to Conrad of Wurtzburg, who lived long after." This reference to Bishop Pelegrin as rescuer of the legends might seem curious, seeing that it is a bishop of the same name, who, as uncle of Kriemhilda, welcomes her to Passau in the poem ; but it is thus explained by Mr. Edward Bell in the introduction to the translation 80 THE DANUBE in Bohn's Libraries, from which the above passage is quoted : * "It is known that, at the request of Bishop Pilgerin of Passau in the tenth century, the story was translated into Latin prose by Conrad, called 'the Scribe ;' and to him is attributed the inclusion of the name of the said bishop as that of an actor in events which, so far as they are historical, belong to the fifth century." Kriemhilda's cavalcade we shall meet again on the journey down the river, for her bishop uncle accompanied her the greater part of the way onwards from Passau. During the Thirty Years' War a " spell " by means of which fainthearted warriors secured themselves against sword and bullet, was associated with Passau. The Passau spell is like that of some primitive peoples who cure diseases by swallowing articles inscribed with magic words. All the soldier who feared his fate too much had to do, was to swallow a slip of paper contain- ing certain potent sentences concluding : * Teufel hilf mir ; Lieb und Seel geb ich dir " (Devil help me ; body and soul give I thee). The spell needed twenty-four hours of digestion before becoming operative — the penalty being that if the swallower died within those hours of disgrace, he went straight to the Devil whose aid he had sought ! The dark waters of the Ilz, the " murky yellow " of the Inn, and the " milky tint " of the Danube, are said to be recognizable some distance after they have joined their streams in one, but such differentiation I must confess I did not observe ; certainly they combine to make a noble stream where it sweeps past the closely wooded Klosterberg just below the town, on the left bank. Most Danube travellers — other than those with time and energy for walking — will from this point see * "The Lay of the Nibelungs." Metrically translated from the old German text by Alice Horton, and edited by Edward Bell, M.A., 1898. PASSAU TO LINZ 8i the river from the deck of one of the pleasantly appointed steamers of the Danube Steamship Company, and looking backwards as the swift stream carries the vessel to the bend which cuts the view from sight, they have a fine general view of Passau and its surroundings. In the centre of the picture are the roofs and towers of Passau, to the left the spires of the chapel of Mariahilf above Innstadt, and to the right the Oberhaus upon its tree- grown rocky height, and between the two rivers rushing to form one. Passau is, as has already been said, the starting place for the passenger steamers of the Danube Steam- ship Navigation Company. From here we may on these vessels — changing now and again into larger boats as we proceed — journey the many hundred miles of waterway that lie between here and the Black Sea. And very pleasant journeying it is, the steamers being thoroughly well equipped and providing within their necessarily circumscribed space, all the comforts of a good and moderate hotel. I feel impelled to say this because readers of some old books on Danube travel might fancy that conditions had not changed since the authors of those books wrote their strong condemnations. In a work published in 1854, on " Frontier Lands of the Christian and the Turk," the following emphatic words appear : " The Danube steamers are a disgrace to Austria. Nothing could be worse than the manner in which they are conducted. The want of civility towards strangers is most offensive, the imposition of the stewards in their charges for food is quite shameful, the irregularity and disorder in the arrangements on board are exceedingly annoying, and the total contempt of cleanliness everywhere visible is altogether disgusting." To-day those words are merely ridiculous. Every sentence should now be rewritten in the very opposite sense. I journeyed on many of the steamers — the G 82 THE DANUBE appointments of which may well make Londoners wish that the Thames had a service of steamers in any way comparable ! The boats are, indeed, thoroughly up-to- date ; the cost of living in them is anything but extrava- gant, and the standard of comfort excellent. They are as far removed from the style described by the writer I have quoted, as our third-class railway carriages are from the open trucks in which our grandparents journeyed when railways were new. It is interesting to learn that it was as early as 1819 that patent rights were first granted for navigation of the Danube by steam vessels, though little seems to have been done for ten years. Then in 1828, a new patent for fifteen years was granted to two Englishmen, John Andrews and Joseph Pritchard, through whose energies the Danube Steamship Company was formed. In 1830, the first steamer was put on the river, and thenceforward the development was rapid. Four years later the first steamer safely passed the Iron Gate and voyaged down to Galatz. Now the Danube Steamship Company has an immense fleet of passenger boats and tugs navigating the Danube from Ratisbon to Sulina, as well as some of the chief tributaries of the great river ; Hungary has another fine river steamship service as well, and so also has Rumania. The coming of the steamers meant the passing of the old " ordinari " or mixed passenger and merchandise boats which bygone travellers describe, and we no longer see these cumbersome but picturesque craft with the cabins like floating wooden huts, their many men at the oars, or long oar-steering work, drifting mostly with the stream downwards and being towed upwards — sometimes by a body of men and sometimes by large teams of horses. The men who hired out these horses were known as " Jodelen " and it is said that there would sometimes be as many as thirty or forty horses drawing four or five PASSAU TO LINZ 83 boats fastened together. These " Jodelen " are described as having had a superstition that some of their number must every year be sacrificed to the Spirit of the Water, and as a consequence when an accident occurred they would all scramble for the drowning man's hat but never think of "stretching a finger to save him whom they look upon as a doomed and demanded victim." Less than a hundred years ago a traveller declared that he had seen five " Jodelen " with their horses precipitated into the river, when their companions hastily cut the ropes to prevent the rest of the team from following, and drove on, leaving the poor wretches to their fate. The coming of the steamers must, it may well be believed, have greatly lessened the toll of life taken by the Danube, though when we see the timber rafts floating down with three or four men at either end using their great steering sweeps, and remember some of the places where the swift current " boils " at the various rapids, we cannot help feeling that it must be hazardous work. Once round the bend to the left immediately below the beautiful old city, and with the view of Passau cut off, we naturally look forwards, and find that we are entering newly grand scenery, where both sides of the river are high, rocky and pine-clad. Where the railway bridge crosses the river, we pass, so far as the right bank is concerned, from Bavaria into Austria. The left bank for some time yet continues to be Bavarian. As the river takes us through lovely scenery, past several tree-grown islands, we get glimpses now and again of villages, but nothing to call for special mention before the castle of Kriimpelstein is seen on the abrupt rocky cliff of the right bank, backed by pine woods. This castle was long the property of the powerful bishops of Passau, who, in virtue of its possession, took " toll from all passing boats." Local tradition gives it the name of " Schneiderschlossl " and, in various forms, tells of an 84 THE DANUBE unhappy tailor who, in throwing a dead goat from the building into the river, himself toppled over and was killed, his mangled body being immediately swept away by the rapid current — and that in the very presence of the Bishop of Passau, lord of the castle, for whom he had just been engaged in cutting out a new suit. Soon it came to be rumoured that it was no genuine goat that the tailor had thrown over but the Devil himself, who had taken on the semblance of a dead goat the easier to make a victim, and that directly the tailor fell the supposed defunct quadruped was seen half flying, half running up the precipitous rocks. As soon as this portentous news was made known the bishop's chaplain made the sign of the cross, and sprinkled holy water down the face of the cliff — and, alive or dead, the goat was seen no more. Pity for the poor tailor was soon turned into " serve him right " for " early in the morning when the brocade was measured, it was discovered that in cutting it out for the bishop's robe, as already stated, the crafty schneidev had cabbaged at least a third of the precious material. All were amazed ; and now the sudden destruction that had overtaken the delinquent was no longer a mystery ; for the goat, as the chaplain clearly explained, had here acted the part both of judge and executioner, and carried off the tailor in the very midst of his wickedness. " And so will it ever happen," he added, " to all who shall attempt thus impiously and dishonestly to curtail the bishop either in his robe or his revenue." That same year, as it was afterwards proved, the offerings made to the bishop at Krampelstein, were nearly doubled!; rents and imposts were paid three days before they became due ; while the story of the "brocade" had so good an effect upon the schneider- craft, that thenceforward little more than half the former quantity of buckskin was found sufficient for the stoutest knight in Bavaria. PASSAU TO LINZ 85 The castle of this legend occupies a grandly pictur- esque position on a jutting spur of rock, close neighboured by other pine-clad rocky heights. From this beautiful point the river sweeps leftwards again, and soon on the lower ground of the left side is seen the town of Obernzell, the first " port of call," backed by hills and trees. This place has long been famous " all the world over " for its manufacture of crucibles and for its graphite quarries. Beyond, the scenery becomes again more mountainous. On the right is seen the village of Kasten, and a little further the high-perched castle of Viechtenstein forms another picturesque feature in the landscape, another reminder of the olden times when all along the river powerful nobles had their strongholds. Before the bishops of Passau got hold of it, the castle had belonged to the Counts of Wassenburg — worthy fellows, it is said of those who ruled at Bogen and elsewhere on the river. One of these Counts, on setting out for the Crusades had pledged Viechtenstein to the Bishop of Passau with the understanding that if the Count did not return the bishop might at once take possession. The Count did return, however, and when he died, left the castle to his widow. The bishop laid claim to it, and sought to get possession, only to be defeated and taken prisoner. But the episcopal voice was more powerful than the episcopal arms, and by pronouncing a ban of excommuni- cation against all who had withstood him, the bishop not only succeeded in winning his freedom but the castle to boot! A little further downstream, a rock, standing about thirty feet above the stream and dividing the channel, takes the attention. This is the Jochenstein, a natural boundary as it were ; north of it is Bavaria, south of it is Austria, and on either side of it the arms of these countries were long since duly placed. From time to time, the Danube water sprite Isa — " a harmless sister 86 THE DANUBE of the Lorelei of the Rhine " — is said here to make her appearance. A little below the Jochenstein, where the ruined tower of Ried shows above the trees, and where a small stream the Dirndlbach, flows into the Danube is the actual boundary ; after passing which we have Austria on either hand. Beyond the fact that it is said to have been destroyed by the conquering Swedes in the seventeenth century, tradition seems to have nothing to say of this old castle on the fir-clad hill ; although its name is supposed to be the only survival of an old tribe, the Rheadarii, who inhabited the district. Just beyond, on the right, is Engelhartzell, the first of the steamer stopping places in Austrian territory, and the one-time seat of an old Cistercian monastery once known as that of the Angels. The monastery has in modern times come to be used as the residence of a noble family. On between beautiful wooded hills the rapid river passes, the next object to attract particular attention being the high-perched castle of Ranariedl. This old castle, which has the distinction of being still inhabited overlooks the delightful valley of the Ranna Bach which here in mountainous haste reaches the Danube by the village of Nieder Ranna. Though still inhabited, the castle saw its share of fighting in the Middle Ages, when the powerful bishops of Passau and various Counts succes- sively struggled for its possession. Shortly beyond, and again on the left, is another and similar hill-top castle — that of Marsbach — with a similar story of disputed owner- ship. This, too, passed into the hands of the bishops of Passau, not, however, before it had been a bone of con- tention between father and son ; for in the thirteenth century, Ortulph of Marsbach was turned out by his son Otto and only regained the place by paying his rebellious son, a sum *' which so reduced his finances that he was compelled to give up the castle after all to Passau, in PASSAU TO LINZ Sy order to relieve himself from his difficulties." Its later history accords well with that of other lordly homes that we pass on the banks of the river, for in the fifteenth century it was owned by certain lords of Oberhaimer, who carried on such plundering ways as their fellows did further up and lower down the stream. With robber nobles every few leagues along the Danube one may well wonder, indeed, how any travellers or merchants ever got themselves or their merchandise safely to the journey's end. One of these grasping Oberhaimers is said to have attacked the boat of one Valentine Rottenburgher, a councillor of Steyr, and at one fell swoop to have carried off booty amounting to seven hundred florins. In 1626 — it would be pleasant to believe as vengeance for such deeds as that just mentioned — a peasant-leader named Spatt attacked the castle successfully and put the garrison to the sword. At Wesenufer is a huge wine-cellar — so huge that it is asserted that a coach-and-four might be turned in it — said to have been hewn in the living rock by the com- mand of the Chapter of the cathedral of Fassau, and the story runs that in 1626 Duke Adolf von Holstein with several thousand soldiers hurrying to the relief of some besieged place landed here with disastrous results. His soldiers commandeered the contents of the cellar and drank not wisely by too well, so that " the armed peasantry, descending from the hills before daybreak, fell on the fuddled Swabians, as they lay ' somno vinoque sepulti,' and slaughtered the greater part of them. The Duke himself narrowly escaped in his doublet, and with the loss of all his property." The beautiful river becomes more impressively beautiful as it passes on here through some of the most remarkable of its tortuous windings, which continue from a little beyond Marsbach to Aschach. This, the Schliigcn, is indeed generally acknowledged to afford 88 THE DANUBE the grandest series of varied views between Passau and Linz. Before the river takes its first abrupt turn round the precipitous mountain on the left, the ruin on the summit of that mountain stands sentinel as it were over the entrance to the serpentine defile. This is the remains of another robber-knight's stronghold, known as Haichenbach to which the vague tradition attaches of an owner in the thirteenth century who, having slain his brother, retired here to end his days in solitude relieved only by the presence of his daughter. The castle was reduced to its present state by the Emperor Maximilian the First. A little way beyond, and the Danube whirls and swirls round the long jutting mountain on which the ruin stands, and so far " doubles in its tracks " that soon Haichenbach again comes in sight. The Schlagen, with its ever-rushing flood of water, its rocky sides now precipitous, now broken and pinnacled, now bare and craggy, now grown with fir and other trees, offers a succession of impressive scenes before which " the grandest views upon the Rhine sink into in- significance." Planche, taking a passage from Burke's famous essay, suggests that where the Rhine stands for the beautiful the Danube represents the sublime. As one knowing little more of the Rhine than can be seen from the rail- way, I am scarcely qualified to make any comparison ; but I should wish to amend Blanche's finding so as to credit the Danube with beauty as well as sublimity, for it assuredly has both. " From Mayence to Cologne there is scarcely one mile of uninterrupted wild scenery ; and even if there were, the charm would be broken by some pert galley, with its white awning and gaudy flag, some lumbering Dutch beurtschiff, or, worse than all, the monstrous anachronism of a steamboat, splashing, spluttering and fuming along at the rate of twelve miles PASSAU TO LINZ 89 an hour.* The mouldering towers that totter upon the crags of the Danube, on the contrary, are surrounded by scenery rude as the times in which they were reared, and savage as the warriors who dwelt in them. Nothing seems changed but themselves. The solitary boat that now and then glides by them, is of the same fashion as that on which their marauding masters sallied down, perhaps three hundred years ago. The humble cot- tages that here and there peep through the eternal firs, and the church that rears its dusky spire upon some neighbouring hill, are of the same age. The costume of the poor straggling fishermen and woodcutters around them is scarcely altered ; and, indeed, one cannot look upon their own walls, blackened by fire and crumbling in the blast, without conjuring up the form of their ancient lord newly returned from Palestine, and finding his mountain-fastness burnt and pillaged by some neighbouring knight or prelate, with whom he was at feud, and on whom he now stands meditating swift and bloody retribution. For hours and hours the traveller may wind through these rocky defiles without meeting one object to scare the spirit of romance, which rises here in all her gloomy grandeur before him." The sentimentalist who needed gloomy grandeur as a necessary setting for romance went on to say that he would almost weep to see a post road cut beside the lonely Schlagen, or a steamboat floundering and smoking through the Strudel and the Wirbel. There is as yet no post road along the Schlagen — there is little likely to be, it may well be thought — but daily steamers " flounder and smoke " through the lovely scenery of the Strudel and Wirbel. Schlagen is the name of the village on the right bank * Planchd journeyed down the Danube in 1827 ; three years later the first of his " monstrous anachronisms " was plying on it ! 90 THE DANUBE where the first turn of the river sweeps round Haichen- bach's rocky ridge, into the " gloomy defile " where the precipitous cliffs rise in some places as much as a thousand feet above the river, here greatly contracted in width. Says the chronicler of the adventurous boat journey : " on turning the sharp corner of Schlagen, where the river almost runs back in the contrary direction to that which it did immediately before, we found ourselves in the most imposing part of this splendid pass, the hills on each [side] rising nearly one thousand feet from the water's edge ; the water was boiling and seething as if over a fire, which imparted a motion to our boat, some- what like that which one feels when sitting in the back seat of a dog-cart, with the horse galloping ; which is a peculiar sensation, I assure you, fair reader, and if you have a brother and he has such a vehicle, make him take you a turn in that fashion, and you will understand how we felt as we swung round the rocky corners of the confined and tortuous defile." The journey is less excit- ing, but no less memorable, taken on a steamer to-day. After passing the northern side of the ridge on which Haichenbach stands the Danube swerves again almost as sharply round the rocky cliff of the right bank — the sinuosities of its course are so complicated, that within the space of twelve or fifteen miles it flows towards all the four points of the compass, only to bend again to the right as it nears the pleasant village of Ober Muhl at the foot of a hill where the Kleine Muhlbach flows in from the mountains. Again it sweeps round a kind of peninsula-point to the left, and so past Unter Miihl to a sight of Neuhaus, high on its almost perpendicular rock. This is also known as the Schloss Schaumburg from the name of the Counts who once owned it, but who lost it to Austria. When the Turks invaded Hungary and threatened Austria this castle was utilized as an asylum of refuge PASSAU TO LINZ 91 for women and children. In 1626 during the Peasants' Revolt the insurgents got possession of Neuhaus, im- prisoning the Countess-owner in the castle, and drew great chains across the river to intercept all boats and stop supplies from reaching Linz ; but even cables of twenty- pounds to a link failed, for the Bavarian boats broke through them. Beyond this old rocky stronghold the hills rapidly decrease in height as we near, on the right, Aschach, which was the headquarters of the Peasants' Revolt. This is a pleasant little town stretching along the river bank close to the commencement of the flat stretch of country through which the river now passes for some miles. The not very lofty Postlingberg, ten miles away by Linz, can be seen from here. The story of this little town is the story of a succession of warlike troubles. In 1626 it was captured and plundered by the revolted peasantry, and again in another rising half a dozen years later. A century ago, too, the town is said to have suffered greatly from friend and foe alike in the Napoleonic wars. In the tenth century the Duke of Bavaria gave the monks of Krems-Miinster certain vineyards at Aschach, and the town long had the reputation of being the most easterly point on the Danube for wine-growing. " The wine made in its neighbourhood is remarkable only for its badness, and is the standing joke of the inhabitants themselves ; we must suppose, therefore, that it has either sadly degenerated since Thassilo made the vine- yards a present to his friends at Krems-Miinster, or that the fraternity were in want of an immediate supply of vinegar." Behind is an extensive castle of the Schaumburgs, with a lofty tower, the chief seat of a powerful family at once dreaded and courted by neighbouring rulers. Tradition says that the river once ran by the walls of the castle, and also that it played a tragic part in the 92 THE DANUBE fate of one of the Counts, who, though invincible in battle or tournament, could not resist the charms of a fair maiden, " armed at both eyes," the daughter of a miller in the valley of Aschach. One night as he was riding to a rendezvous with her, his horse started at the sudden appearance of a fiery dragon that rushed out of a thicket before him, and plunged with his master over a precipice into the swollen torrent below ; the first objects that met the unfortunate maiden's sight when she opened her casement in the morning, were the float- ing corses of her noble lover and his favourite steed. A stone pillar near a brook in the valley before the castle duly commemorated the tragic incident. Below Aschach the river widens out and branches about around innumerable wooded islands and islets which cut off the view across the flat wide valley, though the mountains in the distance are still at times to be glimpsed. Just below the town where the Aschach Bach comes in behind a long island, are the ruins of Stauf, an old castle of the Counts of Staumberg — its picturesque white tower backed by the green hills. On a clear day, too, from this southward turn of the Danube may be had a glimpse of the far Styrian Alps. For some distance the journeyer along the Danube has the view cut off by the many islands formed by the branches of the river. A number of villages are passed on either side. To the south is Efferding where Kriemhilda rested on her journey from Passau, and where, in 1626, Count Pappenheim inflicted a crushing defeat on the insurrectionary peasants — of whom he is said to have slain 40,000 in putting down the revolt. " It was," he declared, " as if my cavalry had to combat the massive rocks ; for these peasants fought not like men, but like infernal furies ! " The peasants, it should be said, fought for that freedom to exercise their Protestant religion which had been granted at Passau three-quarters of a PASSAU TO LINZ 93 century earlier. In this defeat at Efferding the leader of the peasants, a hatter named Stephen Fidinger, was slain ; and subsequently his body was taken from the grave and gibbeted as a warning to those of his followers who still stubbornly resisted. Some distance inland on the left, on a rocky spur, is the castle of Freudenstein. But nothing much that is noteworthy is visible beyond the labyrinth of willow-grown islands through which the river finds its way. Approaching hillier country as it nears Linz, the Danube trends again to the north-east, and Ottensheim is seen on the left with its handsome chateau rising from among a leafy mass of trees and forming a picturesque " bit." The town was mostly destroyed by fire about a dozen years ago. A little further along on the right is Kloster Wilhering with an extensive and once widely powerful Cistercian Abbey founded in the twelfth century, but the present buildings were erected in the eighteenth. It is backed by the Kirnbergwald — the pines of which are seen for most of the rest of the journey to Linz. Here the river enters a beautiful valley with varied woodland-grown hills on either side, with the high Postlingberg crowned with its pilgrimage church showing ahead. Beyond Buchenau, with its compact church on the left, is seen on the right the Kalvarienberg, or Mount Calvary, the little chapels and crucifix of which together offer a place of pilgrimage for the citizens of Linz. With its falling waters, its craggy rocks and pine trees, it forms a pleasantly picturesque spot.'. From Ottensheim to Linz, it may be added, the rail- way keeps closely along the left bank. By wooded hills, the high Postlingberg on the left, and the lower yet steeply impressive height, close grown with fir, on the right, the river reaches Linz on the right bank, having Urfahr on the opposite side, with which it is connected by an ugly lattice iron bridge, over nine hundred feet in length. 94 THE DANUBE Linz, the capital of Upper Austria, is a clean, prosperous-looking town, the straight lines of its build- ings contrasting strongly with the delightful irregularity of Passau ; and its air of modernity gives no suggestion that as Lentia it was one of the Roman stations on the Danube. Possibly when the Huns destroyed it they did so with thoroughness. At the western end of the broad valley through which the river continues for many miles, and backed by the hills, Linz is picturesquely situated, though it is necessary to climb the hills to appreciate this properly. There are a number of churches, a handsome museum, and other fine buildings, but the town itself does not claim long attention, except as an admirable centre for beautiful excursions on both sides of the river. The fine Franz Joseph Platz is seen at its best when, crowded with the stalls and carts of market time, it presents a lively and picturesque scene. The Trinity Column in the centre of it was erected early in the eighteenth century to commemorate the deliverance of the town from two scourges — the Turks and the plague. Pestilence in the olden times seems, indeed, to have been so constant a menace to many of these towns that it is matter for wonder that people were left to take part in the no less constant warfare. Looking up-stream from the bridge, we have a view reminiscent of the Highlands of Scotland, the rocky hill rising from the water, dark with its close-grown trees is surmounted by the Franz Joseph Watch-tower, an observation point from which grand views are to be had both up and down the river. There are other fine views from different parts of this hill, if the watch tower is approached from the town by way of the Freinberg, but the most delightful way of reaching the tower is by following the Danube-side road and taking the steep path up through the woodland, or from the Kalvarienberg. The view-point of the neighbourhood, PASSAU TO LINZ 95 however, is the summit of the Postlingberg on the north side of the river, which may be reached by tramway from Linz, and thence by the mountain railway which ascends the berg from Urfahr. For the lover of fine prospects — and we do not know a tract of country properly unless we can now and again get some approxi- mation to a bird's-eye view — the outlook from the Postlingberg is one of the grandest along the Danube — " Afar the Salzburg and the Styrian Alps In forms gigantic rear their frozen scalps : And there the rugged Trauntstein loves to throw His mingling shadows o'er the lake below. While mountain, river, forest, field proclaim A glorious landscape in a magic frame." Whether as ancient Lentia when it was destroyed by the conquering Huns, or as modern Linz, the town has seen more than its share of warlike trouble. Again and again it was besieged during the disturbed Middle Ages. Its great benefactor was the Emperor Frederick the Third, who when it was rebuilt after a disastrous fire, made it, in 1490, the capital of Upper Austria. Here, three years later, after a reign of more than half a century he died, having — at the age of seventy-eight — to suffer amputation of the leg. The story told of him suggests that he must have been a vigorous old man, for it is said that, taking the severed limb in his hand, he remarked : " What difference is there between an emperor and a peasant ? or, rather, is not a sound peasant better than a sick emperor ? Yet I hope to enjoy the greatest good which can happen to man : a happy exit from this transitory life." In the Napoleonic wars Linz suffered greatly, being thrice within a decade one of the storm centres. In 1805, during his rapid advance on Vienna, Napoleon made this town his headquarters. To turn from warfare to more peaceful matters — 96 THE DANUBE for the full story of Danubian warfare would make a volume by itself larger than this — it is interesting to find that John Kepler, one of the founders of modern astronomy, lived here for some years, and here married in 1613, a portionless orphan named Susanna Reutlinger. In a letter to a friend, Kepler reviewed the various qualifications of no fewer than eleven " candidates for his hand," and explained the reasons that decided him in his choice. It seems so curiously unromantic a begin- ning, that it is pleasant to learn from the astronomer's biographers that the marriage turned out well. We get a glimpse of the scientist at home in a letter which Sir Henry Wotton wrote to Francis Bacon in 1620 : — " For a beginning let me tell your Lordship a pretty thing which I saw coming down the Danuby, though more remarkable for the application than for the theory. I lay a night at Lintz, the metropolis of the higher Austria, but then in very low estate, having been newly taken by the Duke of Bavaria, who, blandiente fortuna, has gone on to the late effects. There I found Keplar, a man famous in the sciences, as your Lordship knows, to whom I purpose to convey from hence [Vienna] one of your books, that he may see that we have some of our own that can honour our king, as well as he hath done with his Harmonica. In this man's study I was much taken with the draft of a landscape on a piece of paper, methought masterly done : whereof inquiring the author, he bewrayed with a smile it was himself; adding, he had done it, non tanqaam pictor, sed tanquam inathe- maticus. This set me on fire. At last he told me how. He hath a little black tent (of what stuff is not much importing) which he can suddenly set up where he will in a field, and it is convertible (Hke a windmill) to all quarters at pleasure, capable of not much more than one man, as I conceive, and perhaps at no great ease ; PASSAU TO LINZ 97 exactly close and dark, save at one hole, about an inch and a half in diameter, to which he applies a long perspective trunk, with a convex glass fitted to the said hole, and the concave taken out at the other end, which extendeth to about the middle of this erected tent, through which the visible radiations of all the objects without are intromitted, falling upon a paper which is accommodated to receive them : and so he traceth them with his pen in their natural appearance, turning his little tent round by degrees, till he hath designed the whole aspect of the field. This I have described to your Lordship, because I think there might be good use made of it for chorography : for otherwise to make landscapes of it were illiberal, though surely no painter can do them precisely." The thing upon which Wotton dilated was the camera obscura of which he had evidently not heard before, though it had been described sixty years earlier by Baptista Porta, to whom the invention is sometimes attributed. Though I did not notice that the womenfolk of other places along the Danube were, speaking generally, less beautiful than those of Linz, it should perhaps be mentioned that most writers about the town draw attention to the beauty of the Linz women, or at least to their being long celebrated for beauty. One writer goes so far as to say that transcendentally beautiful women are so carefully guarded from the public eye that a month may be spent in the town by the most susceptible tourist without his " seeing a face that could endanger his peace. Poets nevertheless," continues the same writer after that ungallant assertion, " have caught much inspiration on the spot and found a prolific theme in the fair maids of Linz, and tourists under the old regime have lent their willing aid in propagating their fame. The annexed ballad relates the fate of one, who, in her day, was the " pride of Linz." H 98 THE DANUBE " Her cheek was bright, her eye was blue, Her smile inspired such nameless rapture, That not a swain who met her view But she could fascinate and capture. By men of war and men of fame, — By ' stars and medals ' she was courted : But still the fair and cruel dame With all their wounds and sorrows sported ; For her the soldiers fought and swore, The statesman lied, the lawyer cheated ; And bards their rhymes in anguish tore, To find their schemes were so defeated ! — But years flew by — the homage ceased ; And now with age and sorrow laden. In cloister weeds she tells her beads — Alas ! for Linz's fairest maiden ! " The moral seems to be that in affairs of the heart there is safety in one rather than in numbers. Before leaving Linz it may be as well to recall a very clever acrostic which I am told Mr. H. R. Lewis wrote in a visitors' book when visiting the town about a quarter of a century ago. It ran thus : — " Mit ein-und-fiinfzig fangt es an Nach tausend Kommst das niichste ; Und, kennst Du wohl Dein alphabet So findest Du das letzte." This may be roughly Englished as follows : — " First one-and-fifty [LI], then the next A thousand is just past [N] ; And, if you know your alphabet, At once you find the last [Z]." It is rarely indeed that the entries made in visitors' books — shrines in which inky offerings to the belly-gods are mostly inscribed — are quite as happy as this. CHAPTER V LINZ TO THE WACHAU "... the Strudel and the Wirbel form Dangers more fierce than devastating storm, Where the great waters with tumultuous roar. Through the defile their pent-up currents pour." Frofn the Gei'tnaii BELOW Linz again we have something of a dramatic change in the scenery of the river. Behind us are the mountains, and for a while they neighbour us fairly closely on the left ; but for some miles it is between willow-grown shores and among islets that the Danube finds its way. For a while the river runs in a north-easterly direction, as though against the Pfen- nigberg, but soon turns south-easterly again round it, and so reaches the long, islanded stretch which continues most of the way to the Wachau. Near where the river Traun comes in from the right, is, on the left, though hidden from view, the old town of Steyregg, or Steyereck, with a castle at one time the possession of a family, a member of which, at the Battle of Marchfeld, rescued the Emperor Rudolph the First, founder of the House of Habsburg, from a gigantic Thuringian knight who had unhorsed and wounded him. At one of the mouths of the Traun, hidden behind islands, is Traundorf, famous for its crawfish. A little distance up it is Ebelsberg, scene of a sanguinary battle between the French and Austrians on 3 May, 1809. " From twelve to sixteen thousand men fell in this terrible 99 lOo THE DANUBE conflict, and the banks of the Traun, from Ebelsberg to the Danube, were literally covered with the slain." Here, too, in the Peasant's War the insurgents were overcome, and lost two thousand men. And these are but two of the incidents in the stormy history of the town. As has been said, the journey from Linz to the commencement of the Wachau is mostly through the willow-grown islands of a broad valley, It was possibly hereabouts that the Emperor Julian " the Apostate " reached the Danube on his remarkable march to assured Empire. Gibbon has summarized the story in graphic fashion. Having assembled a great army near Basle, he divided it into three unequal portions — one was to go through the northern parts of Italy, another through the centre of Rhoetia and Noricum : " The instructions to the generals were conceived with energy and pre-cision ; to hasten their march in close and compact columns, which, according to the disposition of the ground, might readily be changed into any order of battle ; to secure themselves against the surprises of the night by strong posts and vigilant guards ; to prevent resistance by their unexpected arrival ; to elude examination by their sudden departure ; to spread the opinion of their strength, and the terror of his name ; and to join their sovereign under the walls of Sirmium. " For himself, Julian had reserved a more difficult and extraordinary part. He selected three thousand brave and active volunteers, resolved, like their leader, to cast behind them every hope of a retreat ; at the head of this faithful band, he fearlessly plunged into the recesses of the Marcian or Black Forest, which conceals the sources of the Danube, and for many days the fate of Julian was unknown to the world. The secrecy of his march, his diligence, and vigour, surmounted every obstacle ; he forced his way over mountains and LINZ TO THE WACHAU loi morasses, occupied the bridges, or swam the rivers, pursued his direct course, without reflecting whether he traversed the territory of the Romans, or of the barbarians, and at length emerged, between Ratisbon and Vienna, at the place where he designed to embark his troops on the Danube. By a well-concerted stratagem he seized a fleet of light brigantines, as it lay at anchor; secured a supply of coarse provisions, sufficient to satisfy the indelicate, but voracious appetite, of a Gallic army ; and boldly committed himself to the stream of the Danube. The labours of his mariners, who plied their oars with incessant diligence, and the steady continuance of a favourable wind, carried his fleet above seven hundred miles in eleven days, and he had already disembarked his troops at Boncnia [Widdin] only nineteen miles from Sirmium, before his enemies could receive any certain intelligence that he had left the banks of the Rhine." It was possibly somewhere on this stretch of the river that the " fleet of brigantines " was seized and the rapid voyage to Constantinople begun, but of the actual place of embarkation there appears to be no record. Certainly, with a favourable wind, and the energy of oarsmen, aided by the swift current of the stream, the expedition may well have made progress rapid enough to satisfy even the impatience of the astute Julian. Now, in place of the Roman brigantines, are seen the passenger steamers by which we moderns can do the same journey in about four days. The coming of the steamship has probably lessened the number of craft on the river, though as we journey along, we see sometimes a number of the great long barges with high- perched steering houses at the stern, and each with a neat little dwelling hut on the deck, generally noticeable for the attempt at " gardening," made with boxes, pots or tubs, of flowering plants, and even occasionally of 102 THE DANUBE good-sized oleanders. These barges are towed, some- times half a dozen at a time, by strong tug-steamers. Fairly extensive timber rafts, too, are seen, sometimes with as many as four or five steersmen at each end — every steersman working a very long oar-like board by way of rudder. Some of the tugs drawing these barges are armed at the prow with a kind of dredging apparatus, by means of which they can work their way along through unexpected shallows. For, deep as is the Danube in places, in others it is so shallow as to be scarcely navigable at times of low water. The constant variations of depth make the navigation a matter of constant study, as it is sometimes impossible for steamers to pass under the bridges, while at low water, even in the navigable channel, there is in places but a foot of water beneath the keel. Passing down one stretch of the river we may find it to be a broad unbroken surface, and returning a few weeks later, see that surface broken up by long islands of white shingle. Nature has provided a forecaster of what is to happen in this regard. On islets or banks we may occasionally see a solitary fisch-reiher, or heron, or may see one steadily flapping across the water ahead of us. From the captain of the steamer we learn that the bird is known, to those whose business it is to study the changing aspects of the river, as the "water maker," for if it is found standing in the shallows with its beak up-stream, there is going to be high water, if pointing down-stream, then a period of low water is approaching. Such is the local lore, whether scientifically accurate or not I cannot say, and I certainly was not given the opportunity of seeing two neighbouring birds, the one fishing up, and the other down stream ! Returning from the general to the particular, as we near Mauthausen, the first of the steamer's stopping places after Linz, we pass the ruins of the castle of Spielberg, LINZ TO THE WACHAU 103 an old robber-knight's hold, which, unlike most of those we see, was built down near the water's edge. Some distance inland, on the right bank, on high ground are the monastery of St. Florian and the castle of Tillysberg, both places worthy of a visit from those staying in the neighbourhood, and both easily reached by railway from Linz. The large Augustinian monastery, which is the oldest in Austria, was built in memory of one of the martyrs of the Diocletian persecution. Florian, who was thrown into the river Enns with a stone tied to his neck, is said to have appeared posthumously, and given directions where his body was to be found. Where he was buried an altar was erected and later the altar was succeeded by a church, the church by a monastery. The present extensive buildings were erected in the eighteenth century, but the crypt is said to date from the thirteenth. St. Florian's, which has a valuable library of many thousand volumes, was visited by Dr. Dibdin during his famous " Bibliographical Tour," and was described by him with enthusiasm. In the remark- able abbey church he was particularly struck by the " gorgeous and imposing " organ ; " the pipes have completely the appearance of polished silver ; and the woodwork is painted white, richly relieved with gold. For size and splendour I had never seen anything like it. The tout ensemble was perfectly magical. On entering, the organ burst forth with a power of intonation — every stop being opened — such as I have never heard exceeded — as there were only a few present, the sounds were necessarily increased, by being reverberated from every part of the building ; and for a moment it seemed as if the very dome would have been unroofed, and the sides burst asunder. We looked up then at each other, lost in surprise, delight, and admiration. We could not hear a word that was spoken ; when in some 104 THE DANUBE few seconds the diapason stop only was opened, and how sweet, how touching was the melody which it imparted ! " Tillysberg, two or three miles to the east of St. Florian's monastery, takes its name from the great little Austrian soldier to whom it was presented in 1623, by the Emperor in whose cause he had been " atrociously successful." The old castle which stood earlier on the site had for centuries been the property of warrior nobles, but Tilly demolished it, erecting (1630-32) in its place a large square building with four towers and as many windows as there are days in the year. The building was scarcely completed, when Tilly was mortally wounded, as we saw in an earlier chapter, in seeking to stay the victorious progress of Gustavus Adolphus, at a point some hundreds of miles further up the Danube. This great soldier and implacable foe of Protestantism was a remarkable person, described as follows by Schiller : " His strange and terrific aspect was in unison with his character. Of low stature, thin, with hollow cheeks, a long nose, a broad and wrinkled forehead, large whiskers and a pointed chin. He was generally attired in a Spanish doublet of green with slashed sleeves, with a small and peaked hat on his head, surmounted by a red feather, which hung down his back. His whole aspect recalled to recollection the Duke of Alva, the scourge of the Flemings, and his actions were by no means calculated to remove the impression." There seems to have been something of vanity, or at least of the pride that apes humility, in the old soldier, for a French marshal, wishing to see the successful Austrian leader, met him attired much as in Schiller's description, mounted on a small grey horse, and armed with but a single pistol at his saddle-bow. When the new-comer saluted him, Tilly, observing his astonish- ment at finding him thus, said, " I perceive. Monsieur LINZ TO THE WACHAU 105 le Marechal, that you think my uniform rather extra- ordinary ; I admit that it is not quite in conformity with the reigning fashion in Paris, but as it suits my own taste, I am satisfied. I see also that my charger and this single pistol in my holster are matter of surprise to you ; but, that you may not retire with an unfavourable opinion of Count Tilly, whom you have had the curiosity to visit, I will only remind you that I have gained seven decisive victories, without being once obliged to draw the trigger of that pistol ; and as for my little hackney, he has never once made a stumble under me, nor winced in the performance of his duty." Mauthausen, which we were approaching when drawn off to these places seen away to the south, is a small and pleasant town, on the left bank, backed by hills in which are great rugged stone quarries. There is nothing more remarkable about the place than the legend that it owes its origin to the fact that in some mighty flood-time of the past, half of Aschach was carried away by the inundation, and floated down here, where it stranded and became known as Mauthausen. Opposite the town the river Enns comes in, its greener waters being visible for some time before they finally blend with those of the Danube, and a little distance up it is the town of Enns, supposed to be on or near the site of an important Roman station. Like so many other of the places glanced at in a journey down the Danube, it has had a stormy history. Here in 791, Charlemagne is said to have encamped when, with an army moving along each bank of the Danube, and with a third one floating down the river, he started on a memorable punitive expedition against the Avars of Hungary. Again and again did Enns sufl"er in the con- flict between the west and the barbarians. It was made a fortified town, say the chronicles, by Duke Leopold, who io6 THE DANUBE paid for the work with the money which he had received as ransom for Richard Coeur de Lion. In the Middle Ages it was celebrated as having been one of the most famous fairs in Germany. Among the legends of Enns, is one which declares that St. Peter preached the gospel here in the year 49, and another which describes St. Mark and St. Luke as converting the townspeople to the Christian faith. The latter legend was duly inscribed on the city walls in verses that also told how it was here that St. Florian was thrown in the river, and that Maximilian the bishop was " always gentle towards the poor." In the centre of the market place stands a tall detached tower erected by Maximilian the First, in the early part of the sixteenth century. For several miles after the confluence of the Enns with the Danube, the journey continues among islands grown with willows and other water-loving vegetation, the river gradually nearing higher ground on the right, until the stream bends leftwards near where the modernized castle of Wallsee, white with red-tiled roofs, and a handsome clock-tower, rises handsomely among trees at the landing stage. The village is hidden from sight. Wallsee, where the Emperor of Austria stays, has extensive park-like lands on the same, right, bank of the river, while on the opposite side also are large pheasant preserves and hunting grounds. The castle — six or seven hundred years old — was bought by the Emperor a few years ago, and was then rebuilt. Close to the general landing place, is a special little chalet for the use of the Court. For a time beyond Wallsee the scenery continues to be that afforded by willow-grown islands and low banks, but ahead are seen the mountains. Where the valley narrows and the hills are approached on our way to the town of Ardagger on the right, we pass one of the wire LINZ TO THE WACHAU 107 " ferries," by means of which the current is made to take a boat across from shore to shore. Here, it is said, the Emperor Conrad the Second landed in May, 1147, to complete arrangements for getting his great force through the Wachau defile, with its terrible " Strudel " and " Wirbel," when setting out on his disastrous crusade. How great a proportion of his horde he had here is not reported, but when he marshalled it in the great plain of Hungary, says Gibbon, there were fifteen thousand knights and as many squires, " the flower of the German chivalry " ; altogether sixty thousand horse and one hundred thousand foot ; while " under the banners of Conrad, a troop of females rode in the attitude and armour of men, and the chief of these Amazons, from her gilt spurs and buskins, obtained the epithet of the golden footed dame." On the heights above Ardagger is perched a pilgrimage church dedicated to St. Ottilia, one of the patron saints of shoemakers. When I first visited Grein a large band of pilgrims — most of the women wearing white head kerchiefs embroidered in colours — who had been visiting the shrine, went on board the steamer to return to their own neighbourhood some distance down the river. When Ardagger is passed we soon find ourselves again between grand rocky hills, among scenery similarly beautiful to that of the Schlagen between Passau and Linz. Here is a signal station, from which the steamers learn if the tortuous channel through the mountains is clear, for the navigable route amid the whirling waters is so narrow that the regulations do not allow two vessels attempting to pass the "cataracts" together. As we pass between the steep beautifully wooded hills, the village of Grein, a collection of white houses showing among greenery and backed by blue hills, is seen ahead of us in an angle where the river, after going almost due north, bends eastward again. On an io8 THE DANUBE abrupt rock, the Greinberg, to the left of the town is the large white " Schloss " of the Princes of Coburg- Gotha ; once, I believe, the property of Prince Albert. Either Grein has changed since it came to be a river port of call for the steamers, and was reached by the railway, or else Planche when he visited the place must have been in a bad mood, for, in contrast with his usual enthusiasm, he dismisses the town in a few ungenial words : " Grein is one of the poorest and smallest towns in Upper Austria, and the chateau is a large, gloomy building, originally built by Heinrich von Chreine, in the twelfth century." To-day, Grein is known as " the pearl of the Danube." I found it a quiet but charming town most wonderfully situated between hills, with a splendid view both up and down-stream ; up between the wooded hills through which we have passed, and down towards those places of ancient dread — the Strudel and the Wirbel. In autumn, when the wooded mountain sides have taken on the richly varied browns and golds of the passing leaves, this is a peculiarly beautiful bit of the river — andj similar beauty continues in varying degree for the many miles that stretch from here almost to Vienna. Grein is a pleasant town, affording a capital " centre " for the holiday-maker. For the pedestrian there are almost inexhaustible excursions on the mountains and up the Thais, through which cascading streams rush down to the Danube, or along the great river, while further points can be readily reached either by steamer or the railway which has recently been made along the north bank, linking its numerous towns and villages with Vienna and Linz. One of the quaintest things that struck me in Grein was when looking up a yard entrance I saw a fierce black dog, with tail erect, dragging at his chain as though straining for attack, only to find on closer examination LINZ TO THE WACHAU 109 that dog, chain, and kennel, were all painted by some local Wiertz ! A pleasing sight to a lover of birds — one especially noticeable about Grein, though fairly common throughout this district — is the many nest boxes fixed on poles and in trees about the gardens. Here, too, and all along this part of the river, quaint dove-cot-like summits to the chimneys impart a decided picturesque- ness to those useful but too frequently ugly outlets. Inland from Grein about three miles is Bad Kreuzen, a hydropathic establishment for summer visitors, beauti- fully situated. The castle of Kreutzen was a goodly stronghold in past times, and, like Neuhaus, was used, notably when, in the early part of the sixteenth century, the Turks were devastating Upper Austria, as a place of refuge for those driven from their homes by the advancing enemy. Passing down the Danube by the steamer affords a great variety of lovely scenery, but some parts of that scenery, beautiful as they are when seen in passing, are found to be far more beautiful when known with pedestrian intimacy. This applies particularly to where the river twists and winds among the mountains as through the Schlagen, and for the greater part of the way from Grein to Krems. A road, in the latter case, closely follows the windings of the stream, and in its turn is now closely neighboured by a railway which has been cut through rocks and mountain sides, and is carried by great stone embankments over the narrow valleys where many mountain brooks come down. Just below Grein is a wild swirl of waters, the beginning of the " Greiner-schwall " ; but even here, fearsome as the waters look, we may see a couple of girls navigating a heavy ferry boat, allowing the foam- ing water to take it onwards as they steer for the further bank. About a mile further down, and the channel is divided by the large island of Worth, the main no THE DANUBE stream to the left forming the Strudel. Where, to the right, a broad stream sweeps round between the end of the island and the wooded slopes of the Rabenstein at high water, at low water is to be seen nothing but a bed of white shingle. Towards the further end of the island rises an abrupt rock, with some ruined remains of a castle surmounted by a large crucifix. Certainly the tempes- tuous waters seem formidable enough, but after the many lesser rapids passed in the downward journey, they prove less thrilling than some earlier writers have led us to expect. A steamer, too, perhaps imparts more confidence than would a smaller, frailer craft. Now, the high-perched crucifix does not appear to claim the attention which it did of old ; though there must be much of the olden danger still to those who come down these rapids in small boats and on rafts. Of the Strudel an earlier writer said: "In front and in the centre of the channel, rises an abrupt, isolated and colossal rock, fringed with wood, and crested with a mouldering tower, on the summit of which is planted a lofty cross, to which, in the moment of danger, the ancient boatmen were wont to address their prayers for deliverance. The first sight of this used to create no little excitement and apprehension on board ; the master ordered strict silence to be observed — the steersman grasped the helm with a firmer hand — the passengers moved aside — so as to leave free space for the boatmen, while the women and children were hurried into the cabin, there to await with feelings of no little anxiety, the result of the enterprise. Every boatman, with his head uncovered, muttered a prayer to his favourite saint ; and away dashed the barge through the tumbling breakers, that seemed as if hurrying it on to inevitable destruction. All these preparations, joined by the wildness of the adjacent scenery, the terrific aspects of LINZ TO THE WACHAU iii the rocks, and the tempestuous state of the water, were sufficient to produce a powerful sensation on the minds even of those who had been all their lives familiar with dangers ; while the shadowy phantoms with which superstition had peopled it threw a deeper gloom over the whole scene." This account, though vivid, is scarcely accurate, for the cross-surmounted rock forms part of the island, and can thus scarcely be described as being in the centre of the channel ; and "steersman " should surely be "steersmen." Timber rafts, as I have said, frequently have eight men steering at once, and the Danube passenger steamers when passing over such waters as this have as many as four men together at the doubled steering-wheel. A romantic story attaches to the Worth Cross, for it is said that a Tyrolese nobleman, journeying along the river in 1540, was wrecked in the Strudel, but succeeded in getting on to the island. He saw his wife swept away by the flood, and so set up as a hermit on the island, and there he remained until a dozen years later, when his wife — who had been rescued from the water some distance below the Strudel and not unnaturally concluded that he had perished — discovered him. The reunited couple commemorated their escape and their reunion, says the legend, by erecting the cross. Many rocks, here and further down, have been blasted away to improve the navigation ; and this has no doubt made the Strudel less dangerous to appearance as well as in reality. Rocks used to be visible at low water dividing the rapids into three, and these and the submerged rocks were all named by the boatmen. They have, however, been removed by modern engineer- ing so that when the water is even low enough to leave the bed of the Hossgang, or right branch of the river bare, no Strudel rocks are visible. The Hossgang is said to have originated in a farmer's having cut an 112 THE DANUBE irrigating channel into the low-lying land that now forms the island, and to have been enlarged by the force of the impetuous current. A little below the Strudel is the Wirbel, which was at one time more dreaded as a "whirlpool" than the rapids we have just mentioned, but the improvement of the navigation has done away with the second of these twin terrors of the old-time boatmen and now we have to be told when we are passing the one-time place of dread, for the tower-crowned rock that divided the channel and formed the phenomenon was some years ago entirely cleared away. More than sixty years ago Dr. Beattie declared prophetically that "if the rock called Hausstein were blown up it is probable that this whirlpool would entirely disappear." How effectually this has been the case the present-day visitor acquainted with the old accounts of the terrible Wirbel will soon ascertain. Before dealing with the Wirbel it may be interesting to quote Planche's account of his passage of this part of the river, describing it as it was before the channel had been cleared : " As soon as a bend of the river has shut out the view of Grein and its chateau, a mass of rock and castle scarcely distinguishable from each other, appears to rise in the middle of the stream before you. The flood roars and rushes round each side of it ; and ere you can perceive which way the boat will take, it dashes down a slight fall to the left, struggles awhile with the waves, and then sweeps round between two crags, on which are the fragments of old square towers, with crucifixes planted before them. It has scarcely righted itself from this first shock, when it is borne rapidly forward towards an immense block of stone, on which stands a third tower, till now hidden by the others, and having at its foot a dangerous eddy. The boat flashes like lightning through the tossing v/aves, within a (qw LINZ TO THE WACHAU 113 feet of the vortex, and comes immediately into still water, leaving the passenger who beholds this scene for the first time, mute with wonder and admiration. These are the Scylla and Charybdis of the Danube, the celebrated Strudel and Wirbel. The passage is made in little more than the time it takes to read the above brief description, and I could scarcely scratch down the outlines of these curious crags and ruins, before I was whirled to some distance beyond them." The second of these phenomena was the Wirbel, more truly described, it would seem, as an eddy than as a whirlpool. About a thousand yards below the Strudel there used to rise from the channel towards the right bank a rocky islet known as the Hausstein, the stream rushing against this part of it going to the right through a narrow channel known as the Liing, and the rest forming the Wirbel on the left. " This has the appearance of a series of foaming circles, each deepening as it approaches the centre, and caused by the two opposite streams rushing violently against each other. [The Hossgang branch comes in again to the main stream almost at right angles.] . . . The circle, within which the eddies perform their circumvolutions with amazing velocity, deepens as it approaches the centre, so as to form a basin nearly five feet in depth, and filling the neighbouring echoes with the increasing roar of its waters." It certainly must have been a hazardous business getting rafts and boats past the Wirbel, especially at times when the Liing was not navigable owing to the lowness of the water, and it is not matter for surprise that there are many records of wrecks. The destruction of the Hausstein removed the cause of the disturbance, and the terrors of the Wirbel have become traditional. A German writer in 1780 went so far, indeed, as to declare that then those terrors were much exaggerated: I 114 THE DANUBE " A o^reat variety of circumstances concur to excite an idea of danger in both these parts of the Danube. Low mechanics are fond of speaking of them, and magnifying the danger, that they may increase their own importance in having gone through it. Others, more simple, who come to the place with strong conceits of what they are to meet with there, are so struck with the wildness of the prospect, and the roaring of the water that they begin to quake and tremble before they have seen anything. But the masters of the vessels are those who most effectually keep up the imposition. They make the passage a pretence for raising the price of the freight, and when you are past them the steersman goes round with his hat in his hand to collect money from the passengers as a reward for having conducted them safely through such perilous spots. When our master (who yet knew how very much it was for his interest to keep up the credit of his monsters) saw how little attention I paid to them, he assured me in confidence that during the twenty years he had sailed the Danube, he had not heard of a single accident." That the " master " was going to the other extreme of exaggera- tion is shown by the fact that — besides fatalities in the Wirbel — two vessels had been wrecked on the sunken rocks of the Strudel only three years before that was written. Many were the old methods of accounting for the Wirbel. A sixteenth-century cosmographer declared " they have often sounded in this place, but the abyss is so deep that they can touch no ground. It is bottom- less. What falls therein, remains under and never comes up again." This was the kind of marvel beloved in the olden, credulous times, and other marvels no less wonderful were associated with the Wirbel. One learned author declared that there was a hole in the river bed here which received the whirling waters that LINZ TO THE WACHAU 115 after a long subterranean journey reached the great Hungarian lake known as the Plattensee, and in proof of the theory it was gravely asserted that some bold experimentalists had a vessel wrecked in the Wirbel — and in course of time a hammer that had belonged to a cooper on board was found {floating, says one account) in the Plattensee. The tradition of " unfathomable depth," received a rude shock in the middle of the eighteenth century when a barge laden with pottery sank in the Wirbel, and the roof of the hut aboard remained visible ! Even as stories gathered about the whirlpool so did they around the neighbouring ruins, and especially in connexion with the towers that stood on the Haus- stein, and a neighbouring rock — both of which have been done away with by the navigation improve- ments. It is not surprising that these various ruins — half a dozen within a mile or so — became the centres of legendary lore among the credulous peasantry. To quote from Dr. Beattie's summary : " Each of these mouldering fortresses was the subject of some miracu- lous tradition, which circulated at every hearth. The sombre and mysterious aspect of the place — its wild scenery and the frequent accidents which occurred in the passage, invested it with awe and terror ; but above all, the superstitions of the time, a belief in the marvellous, and the credulity of the boatmen, made the navigation of the Strudel and the Wirbel a theme of the wildest romance. At night, sounds that were heard far above the roar of the Danube issued from every ruin. Magical lights flashed through their loopholes, and casements — festivals were held in the long deserted halls — maskers glided from room to room — the waltzers maddened to the strains of an infernal orchestra — armed sentinels paraded the battlements ; while at intervals the clash of arms, the neighing of steeds, and the shrieks of ii6 THE DANUBE unearthly combatants smote fitfully on the boatman's ear. But the tower in which these scenes were most fearfully enacted, was that on the Longstone, commonly called the Devil's Tower, as it well deserved to be — for here, in close communion with his master, resided the Black Monk, whose office it was to exhibit false lights and landmarks along the gulf, so as to decoy the vessels into the whirlpool, or dash them against the rocks. He was considerably annoyed in his quarters, however, on the arrival of the great Soliman in these regions ; for to repel the turbanned host — or at least to check their triumphant progress to the Upper Danube — the inhabi- tants were summoned to join the national standard, and each to defend his own hearth. Fortifications were suddenly thrown up — even churches and other religious edifices were placed in a state of military defence ; women and children, the aged and the sick were lodged in fortresses, and thus secured from the violence of the approaching Moslem. Among the other points at which the greatest efforts were made to check the enemy, the passage of the Strudel and Wirbel was rendered as impregnable as the time and circumstance of the case would allow. To supply material for the work, patriotism for a time got the better of superstition, and the said Devil's Tower was demolished and converted into a strong breastwork. Thus forcibly dislodged, the Black Monk is said to have pronounced a malediction on the intruders, and to have chosen a new haunt among the recesses of the Hartz mountains. Another story associating the Evil One in the days of the Emperor Henry the Third, with this part of the river is told by John Aventinus, the sixteenth-century annalist of Bavaria : " The Emperor departed from Regensburg and came by water to Passau : there he tarried during the Passion week, and till the holy feast of the Ascension. The next day after which, he again LINZ TO THE WACHAU 117 took water, and journeyed into lower Bavaria as Austria was then called. There is a town in Austria by name Grein ; near this town is a perilous place in the Danube called the Strudel by Stockerau* There doth one hear the water rushing far and wide, so falls it over the rocks with a great foam, which is very dangerous to pass through, and brings the vessel into a whirlpool rolling round about. The Emperor Henry went down through the Strudel ; in another vessel was Bruno, Bishop of Wartzburg, the Emperor's kinsman, and as the Bishop was passing also through the Strudel, there sat upon a rock that projected out of the water, a man blacker than a Moor, of a horrible aspect, terrible to all who beheld it, who cried out and said to Bishop Bruno, '.Hear! Hear! Bishop! I am thine evil spirit! Thou art mine own, go where thou wilt, thou shalt be mine, yet now I will do nought to thee, but soon shalt thou see me again.' All who heard this were terrified. The bishop crossed and blessed himself, said a few prayers, and the spirit vanished. This rock is shewn to this day ; upon it is built a small tower all of stone, without any wood : it has no roof, and is called the Devil's Tower." Thus far the credulous chronicler Aventinus. The tragic sequel to this demoniac threat we shall learn a little further down the Danube. These waters, so long the terror and wonder of those who used the river, have, as I have indicated, been greatly tamed by the removal of the obstructing rocks, but there were not wanting people who regarded the dangers as greatly exaggerated. The German traveller, Riesbeck, did so, as we saw a little earlier, but the traditional dangers long sufficed as an excuse for * This is no doubt a slip for Strudcn, as Stockerau lies far further down the river, about seventy miles nearer Vienna, on a branch of it some distance from the main stream. ii8 THE DANUBE dwellers on the bank, and boatmen, too, to secure " tips " from passengers journeying down the river. The custom still obtained when Planche took his trip, for he says that as soon as the Wirbel was passed a boat put off from the village of St. Nikola and paddled alongside, when a man held out a box bearing a figure of the saint, that a few coins might be dropped in as a thank-offering for saintly protection during the passage of the dangerous reach. On board the regular passage boats — the Ordinari — which preceded the steamers, too, money was collected by the steersmen as soon as the Wirbel was astern, " and another ceremony likewise takes place, something similar to that customary on board a ship when passing the Line. The steersman goes round with the wooden scoop or shovel with which they wet the ropes that bind the paddles to their uprights, filled with water ; and those who have never before passed through the Strudel and the Wirbel must either pay or be well soused with the element, the perils of which they have just escaped." Was there no clamouring for compensation, no indignation at interfering with the vested interests of the tip-gathers, when the obstructing rocks were cleared away ? At any rate, the passenger by steamer over these troubled but no longer terrible waters is not called upon for backshish or thank-offering. That the waters are troubled no one who passes over them will deny, for as the steamer passes over the Strudel we are — or imagine that we are — conscious of a distinct change in the level as we go over the " fall." As even those who take a more or less hurried journey along the Danube should make a stay, however short, in this neighbourhood, I will take up the story of the shore from Grein. Leaving that pleasant town by the road cut along the foot of the cliff, we get, looking back from the opposite corner of the " bay " which the bending river here forms, a picturesque v\q^n of the LINZ TO THE VVACHAU 119 Coburg castle above the town, and the timber-grown hill to the left. The road is here cut along the very rock which in bold crags towers above our heads, while on the further side of the river are densely wooded hills. At the corner we are directly above the swirling waters of the Greiner-schwall, and after a pleasant walk of about a mile come opposite the western end of the Worth island, with a capital view of the wooded rock surmounted by its cross, and on the left bank of the river the boldly perched ruins of the castle of Struden or Werfenstein. Before reaching these, how- ever, we pass the opening of a narrow valley — the " Stillenstein Klamm," which, before we have been long in Grein, is known to be one of the special view-places of the neighbourhood. From this valley, beneath the high viaduct of the new railway which spans it just before it reaches the Danube, comes a small hurrying brook, the course of which should be followed by any lover of woodlands and water. Passing the mill that stands a little way up the valley, we may follow a path that keeps fairly close to the stream for two or three miles up to the very point where it emerges from beneath the Stillenstein itself — a great mass of rock, with a couple of pine trees growing on it, which has fallen at some immemorial period and got wedged between the opposite rocky sides of the valley. From the black cavern under this rock the stream emerges, at once as a cascade ; and as an almost continuous series of cascades it continues all the way to the great river to which it adds its contri- bution. Here and there are pools in which many trout are to be seen " staying their wavy bodies against the stream." The principal " fall " is where the water has got imprisoned between great rocks and falls over in a wedge-like shape, a mass of foaming white. The mountains rise steeply on either side as we pass up the I20 THE DANUBE " Klamm," clothed from the very water's edge — their boughs almost intermingling above it in places — with beech and pine and other trees. About the great grey boulders of rock are a profusion of ferns and mosses : the whole is like the beauty of some Devonshire lane and stream raised to the nth. — a kind of lyric love- liness that uplifts and gladdens, where the grandeur of the great river to which the stream is hurrying has something rather of epic sweep and solemnity. Returning to the bank of the Danube we pass below the ruined castle and through the small village of Struden, the road narrowing considerably between quaintly picturesque houses. Beyond Struden we come abreast of the old Wirbel of many terrors, but the rock which formed it has gone, and a great gilt inscription on the face of the cliff above us is its chief memorial : — "KAISER FRANZ JOSEF befriete die Schiffahrt von den Gefahren im DONAU— WIRBEL durch Sprengung der Hausstein Isel 1853-1866." Beneath this inscription is a tiny chapel on the inner side walls of which are a couple of inscriptions concerning the clearing of the river channel ; the one surmounted by a view of the Hausstein island, the other by a plan of this part of the river before the improvements were carried out. A little beyond we reach the village of St. Nikola, the slender tower of its church rising picturesquely above the roofs of its houses, set amid trees and backed by the wooded mountains. Here comes in another mountain stream inviting to inland excursion. It is not surprising to learn that this is a favourite centre for artists, seeing that it is not only beautiful in itself but a centre from which many other varied beauties are to be reached. In this walk along ST. -NIKOLA LINZ TO THE WACHAU 121 the left bank, as one enthusiast has put it, the tourist may enjoy the scenery in all its perfection : " Castles, rocks, rapids, beetling precipices, romantic cliffs, and mountains, whose sweeping forests descend to the water's edge, present themselves to his eye under every variety of combination — often compelling him to halt till he has paid again and again his tribute of admiration." The next place to be reached is the long and straggling village of Sarmingstein, with on a rock above it the ruins of a round watch-tower — all that is left of a one-time important castle that was long main- tained as a refuge for non-combatants in time of war. The prosperous village seems chiefly given over to the timber and granite cutting industries, and here, as the steamer goes down the river, we may see the large, long barges being loaded with planks, the work being done by women. Some of the mountain sides here are entirely denuded of their timber ; the tree trunks being slid down the steep slopes to the river-side. Through part of Sarmingstein the road narrows again closely between the houses as at Struden. Probably this was done owing to the scantiness of the land between the mountain side and the river, or it may have been to make it less easy for the passage of an enemy in the old and troubled times. One of the worst of the " high-water marks " which are seen ever and again in Danube-side towns and villages is placed against the side of a house in Sarmingstein, about twelve feet above the pavement. A number of houses are to be noticed along these river-side places without any living- rooms on the ground floor, this being doubtless a precaution against floods. The long street which forms the village of Sarming- stein runs at the foot of a beech-clothed mountain, on which are pleasant paths with seats at intervals, from 122 THE DANUBE which may be had lovely views over the roofs of the place to the intensely green river. Among the wealth of wild flowers I was especially struck here by the beautiful cyclamen. Near the further end of Sarming- stein are timber mills worked by the Sarmingbach, which here cascades down through a narrow valley in a manner somewhat similar to that of the stream that rushes down from the Stillenstein. The roadway that is cut up through the woods on the mountain side on the left bank of this small tributary of the Danube zig-zags about like the approaches to a Swiss pass. This beauti- ful village has found an enthusiastic panegyrist in Herr Carl Julius Weber. Between Grein and Sarmingstein the villages are all on the left bank, on the right there being but occasional cottages, sometimes perched high on grassy patches among the woodland like Alpine chalets. Little more than a mile further down stream is the pretty hamlet of Hirschenau on the left bank and on the opposite side the lofty ruins of Freyenstein, at one time one of the largest and most powerful of Austrian castles. Still between wooden hills we pass, with here and there small hamlets visible. At Isperdorf there appears nothing but a mere landing stage at the foot of a rocky pine- clad hill. The village of Isperdorf, where Charlemagne conquered Duke Thassilo of Bavaria in yZy, is on the further side of the river Isper, which comes in from the north. This stream marks the boundary between Upper and Lower Austria on the left bank. Here the valley widens out as the Danube hastens to its confluence with the Ybbs, and soon we see the white castle or chateau of Persenbeug standing boldly on a rock by the water's edge on the left. The town of Persenbeug lies further along, and is scattered somewhat over the flat peninsula round which the Danube here makes a sharp bend to the southwards ; the road and the railway both < LINZ TO THE WACHAU 123 cross the northern end of this peninsula, from which Persenbeug takes its name, corrupted from Bosenbeug, signifying a dangerous bend in the river, of which this might be regarded as the beginning. The Schloss Persenbeug, though much renewed, and looking modern in its creamy whiteness, represents one of the oldest buildings in Lower Austria. It was at one time a summer residence of the Austrian Emperors, and is associated with the story of the Devil and the Bishop the first part of which was enacted in the neighbour- hood of the Strudel and Wirbel. To continue that story in the words of the old chronicler before quoted, after describing the passing of the Devil's Tower he goes on, " Not far from thence, some two miles' journey,* the Emperor and his people landed, proposing to pass the night in a town called Posenbeiss, belonging to the Lady Richlita, widow of the Count Adalbero von Ebersberg. She received the Emperor joyfully ; invited him to a banquet, and prayed him, besides, that he would bestow the town of Posenbeiss and other surrounding places (that her husband had possessed and governed) on her brother's son Welforic the Third. The Emperor entered the banquet room, and standing near Bishop Bruno, Count Aleman von Ebersberg and the Lady Richlita, gave the Countess his right hand and granted her prayer. At that moment the floor of the apartment fell in, and the Emperor fell through into the bathing chamber below it, without sustaining any injury, as did also Count Aleman, and the Lady Richlita, but the Bishop fell on the edge of the bathing tub, broke his ribs and died a few days afterwards. Another account says that others, including Lady Richlita, were also killed. This tragic incident, it is suggested by Planche, was really brought about by the machinations of the monks of Kremsmiinster who laid claim to the castle and estates. * It is about eight English miles. 124 THE DANUBE They did not, however, succeed in getting possession of them, and Persenbeug had been successively the property of several nobles before, at the beginning of the last century, it was repurchased by the Emperor of Austria. A little lower down stream, on one of the arms through which the river of the same name reaches the Danube, is the attractive old town of Ybbs — its red- roofed houses dominated by a spired church and backed by low green hills. From the outlook point of" Kirl " is to be obtained a grand view of the Danube, and, away to the south, of the Austrian Alps and the lofty Schneeberg. A little beyond Ybbs the Linz-Vienna railway approaches close to the river and keeps near it for some distance. Having passed round the southern point of the Persen- beug peninsula — on which and on the further bank tall chimneys denote modern manufacturing activity — we go by the ruins of a Cistercian monastery at Saussenstein (on the right bank). Saussenstein takes its name from the rushing of the waters of the " Charybdis " which swirls round its base. Before the river turns eastward again, on the summit of a hill ahead of us are seen the twin towers of a church. This is the pilgrimage church of Maria-Taferl, some distance inland from Marbach, which pleasant little town seems chiefly to exist as a point of approach for the place of pilgrimage. In something under an hour's walk, the last part of it up a broad hill-side avenue, the roadway of which is formed into wide steps, we may reach Maria- Taferl — and if the atmosphere be suitable may have a widely extensive view in both directions of the " Imperial Danube's rich domain " and of the distant Austrian and Styrian Alps. The view is, indeed, said to extend for a hundred miles, from Hungary to Bavaria. When I climbed it lowering rain clouds cut off all but the nearer view of the river. The village that has sprung up LINZ TO THE WACHAU 125 around the pilgrimage church is like nothing so much as a huge bazaar for the sale of souvenirs and picture post- cards to pious pilgrims and curious visitors. On special occasions — particularly in September — it is a point to which large crowds of devotees converge. It is said that as many as one hundred and fifty thousand pilgrims have visited the shrine in a single year ; some of them perhaps inspired by the promise of the distich which runs — " Wer nach Maria Taferl ein Wallfahrt maken thut Diess ihm Maria Taferl macht aller wiedergut." ("Who to Maria Taferl a pilgrimage takes To him Maria Taferl all good again makes.") This church — about eight hundred feet above the river level — was erected in consequence of the miracles worked by an image of the Virgin which used to be fixed to an old oak tree on the hill-side. At this tree the peasantry were wont at Easter to offer up their prayers for a goodly harvest, and at its foot they would have their feasting at a big stone table (tafel or taferl). When the tree had fallen into decay a peasant, in 1662, sought to cut it down, but the axe, though aimed at the trunk, struck the would-be woods- man's own foot. Looking up, the peasant saw the image and was instantly struck with contrition, and his penitent prayers were answered by the instant and miraculous curing of the newly inflicted wound. The news was soon bruited abroad and the fame of the image increased thereby. Ten years later another man, suff"ering from a black melancholy, was directed by a vision to go to the house of a schoolmaster in which he would find an image of the Virgin. This he bought and carried home. In the middle of the night he heard a voice saying, " If thou wouldst be cured take the image and place it in the oak 126 THE DANUBE at Maria-Taferl ! " The melancholy one as soon as day- light came did this, replacing the old image with his new one ; and in the instant he had his reward, his melancholy passing completely away. But it was not only these two miracles that established the fame of Maria-Taferl, for within a few years, on five several occasions — -and sometimes by as many as forty persons — angels were seen about the sacred spot ! Small wonder that the place became a famous centre for pilgrims. In the many bazaar-like booths pictures of the miraculous happenings and other relics are sold, while on occasions of special pilgrimage the whole village that has grown up by the chapel is decorated with bunting and greenery. The way-marks, the shops in Marbach, the large new refreshment establishment near the station, all indicate the extent to which this quiet old river-side place depends upon the periodical influx of pilgrims bound for the twin-spired chapel, which is seen inland over the near hill-top. A short distance further along the Danube, where the Erlaf flows in on the right, stands the old town of Pochlarn, once large and famous, now small, with slender-spired church, some quaint buildings, a curious fountain, and other links with the past, but nothing beyond tradition connecting it with the "Nibelungen- lied." We saw earlier how Kriemhilda reached the Danube, was welcomed at Passau, and set out on the later stages of her lengthy journey to her new husband and her new kingdom. Pochlarn was an important point on that journey, for it was here lived one of those most intimately connected with her story. This was that Rudeger of Bechlaren (Pochlarn) who set out for the Rhineland to woo Kreimhilda on behalf of King Etzel. Rudeger paused at Pochlarn on his journey from Gran to the west, and there feasted the grand company that attended him on his embassy. When he LINZ TO THE WACHAU 127 returned with the beautiful bride whom he had won for his king, Riideger's town gave that lady a wonderful reception. The Margrave's wife rode forth some distance to welcome her husband and the great cavalcade, which rested at some distance before making fitting entry into Pochlarn. " That night they slept in quiet until the dawning brake. But they of Bechelaren themselves did ready make, So that they might provide for so many a worthy guest. Well RUdeger had managed that little should be missed. One saw how every window stood open in the wall : The castle of Bechlaren was entry free to all. Therein the guests came riding, well seen of all around. The noble host had bidden good hostel to be found. Then Riideger's fair daughter with all her company, Unto the queen approaching, received her lovingly. There likewise was her mother, the wife of the margrave. To many a young damsel they kindly greeting gave. Hands took they with each other, and so together went Unto a wide roomed palace of fashion excellent, For there beneath it rushing, one saw the Danube's flood. They sat and took the breezes, and had much pastime good." There was further feasting in the castle of Pochlarn, when Rudeger, a few years later, welcomed King Gunther and his Burgundians on their fateful visit to King Etzel's Court. Surely he deserved the tribute paid to him by Eckcwart in the "Lied." " A host to you I'll show : And such a one ne'er bade you into his house to go. In any land whatever, as ye may meet with here If ye, good thanes, are willing to visit Rudeger. He dwells hard by the highway : of hosts he is the best That ever had a rooftree. His heart is aye possesst Of kindness, as of flowers are meadows in sweet May ; If he can succour heroes, glad will he be the day." 128 THE DANUBE Of Riideger's castle nothing now remains, but the town where that best of hosts could provide emergency- entertainment for ten thousand visitors — as is recorded in one stanza of the " Lied " — may well be proud of its association with the great epic of the North. Planche, it may be said, gives a highly coloured account of Kreimhilda's coming down the river by boat — a vision which is scarcely supported by the text of the " Nibelungenlied." Opposite to the famous Pochlarn is a pleasant little village of the same name, known as Klein Pochlarn, with further tall chimney shafts suggesting that this widened Danube valley is becoming a manufacturing centre. The right bank along here is low, but the hills approach close to the river on the left, and soon ahead of us is seen the ruined castle of Weitenegg, at which point we may perhaps best begin the story and description of the Wachau. CHAPTER VI THE WACHAU " 'Mid castled crags and swirling stream, 'Mid green-clad vineyard hills, Where History and Legend dream, My heart with beauty thrills." From the German THE Wachau has come to be regarded as one of the show places of the Danube, and very beautiful it is, with its narrow gorge through which the great river finds its way, its wooded moun- tains, its crag-perched ruins, its quaint old towns and villages, and its numerous vineyards lining the rocky mountain-sides. It was " discovered " not many years since by one Augustin Weigl, and its accessibility from Vienna has served to make it the most popular portion of the beautiful river. Many as are its attractions, there are stretches further up the river — notably that from Grein to Persenbeug — that can vie with it in attractiveness, and there are moods in which the last portion of the river in Hungary may be far more impressive. Such comparisons are, however, invidious, and those who explore the " schone, herrliche Wachau " can easily extend their explorings, either afoot or by the new railway, to the Grein district. The ruins that show boldly on a cliff indicate how well the builders of these old strongholds selected their sites. For Weitenegg was built on a point of the rocky hills where the broad Danube runs along one side, and K 129 I30 THE DANUBE the Weitenbach runs parallel with it before joining it at the end of the narrow strip on the highest point of which the castle is situated. Thus the old-time owners of the place, in the days when every noble was liable at any time to find himself at enmity with his neighbours, were more or less secure from attack except from the narrow neck joining their narrow hill on to the high one on the west. Now there is little to suggest those days of old-time struggle, and climbing about the ruins we look down on the village, little more than a single row of houses at the foot of the cliff, with wooded " rolling " ground on the further side of the river backed by distant mountains. Behind us are the beautiful hills from which the Weitenbach comes down ; hills about which we may find, even in the autumn, many of the flowers of our gardens growing wild — sweet-williams, Michaelmas daisies, and campanulas, while the cyclamen and Virgin Mary's cowslip plants suggest that earlier in the year this must also be a delightful district for the lover of flowers. From the road up the hill immediately behind the ruins is to be had a beautiful glimpse across the valley opening and over the Danube to the handsome buildings of the magnificent monastery of Molk, a little further down the river. The Castle of Weitenegg must have been a fairly extensive place at one time, having presumably been added to considerably since it was originally erected, as it is supposed, by that Riideger of whom we hear so much in the story of Pochlarn. Judging by the extent of the remains that are left, the size of the rooms and halls, now weed-grown skeletons, it must have been very large ; and despite the tradition as to its age, there appear to have been considerable additions in more modern times. Many of the window spaces form a modern " note," suggesting that they were added no earlier than the late seventeenth century. -1 THE WACHAU 131 The lower portions are largely of stone, the native rock largely worked into it, though there is also a goodly proportion of seemingly more or less modern red brick. But for its ruins and its lovely inland walks, the little village of Weitenegg has nothing to attract the visitor. A short distance further down stream a cable ferry connects this left bank with the right, and so takes us to Molk, largely hidden by a tree-grown island. The small town of Molk is at the foot of the abrupt rock on which the grand monastery buildings have been erected with a fine eye to effect. The steamer landing place is a little below the monastery which, seen from the river, might be a magnificent palace. This splendid " Kloster " has been described by Dibdin as "one of the noblest edifices in the world." The Bibliographical Tourist went on, indeed, to declare that, " Christ Church College at Oxford, and Trinity College at Cambridge shall hardly together eclipse it ; while no single portion of either can bear the least comparison with its cupola-crowned church, and the sweeping range of chambers which runs parallel with the town." Though on the site of an older establishment, the place, which arouses every visitor to enthusiasm — " the Escurial of Germany " it has been named — was designed and erected in the eighteenth century — that period so often decried for its architectural achievements. It was built during the first third of that century by an archi- tect named Prandauer. Not much of the early history of the place is known, though tradition tells of the burial at Molk of a Scottish saint who, bound on a pilgrimage to Palestine in 1012 was mistaken for a spy when passing through this neighbourhood and promptly hanged. Presumably his saintliness was revealed (as in so many instances) posthumously. In the seventeenth century Molk was twice besieged, 132 THE DANUBE once by the Turks when they swept through a large part of Austria. It was, however, an earlier building that was thus put to warlike uses ; possibly it was in conse- quence of damage done by the besieging Turks in 1684 that the monastery was rebuilt in the early part of the following century. Here in 1805 Napoleon made a short stay in his victorious advance on Vienna and here he stayed also in 1809. In one of the apartments a mark on the floor used to be shown as having been made by the Emperor in a moment of passion. The two centres of greatest interest in this most magnificent of the Benedictine foundations along the Danube are the church and the library. The former is a lofty and richly decorated building " the very perfection of ecclesiastical Roman architecture," with a wonderful wealth of gold in its decoration. The library, which is noted for containing a large number of biblical and manuscript rarities, is a grand lofty room about a hundred feet in length, with a handsomely painted ceiling, and also no small measure of gilding in its scheme of decor- ation. Of the great wine " caves " or cellars, which apparently formed one of the features on which the old- time monks prided themselves, it is said that in some of them a carriage might be turned with ease. A French writer a few years after the campaign of 1805 said "in order to have an idea of the abundance which reigns here, it may be sufficient merely to observe, that for four successive days, during the march of the French troops through Molk towards Vienna, there were delivered to them not less than from fifty to sixty thousand pints of wine per day — and yet scarcely one-half of the stock was exhausted. The French generals were lodged here on that momentous occasion and no doubt found it " snug lying in the abbey." Splendid as the monastery appears when seen from the water and from the left bank, its situation was well THE WACMAU i33 chosen for the views it affords of the wooded heights across the river and for the beautiful prospect to be had from its gallery over the tree-grown islets up the river to where Weitenegg stands on its rocky promontory backed by the green woodlands of the higher hills, with the mountains in the distance. A little below Molk on the left bank is the small town of Emmersdorf, another one-time robber strong- hold, and on the opposite side where the river Bielach comes in is, I believe, technically the beginning of the Wachau — the gorge through which the Danube finds its way to the plain on which Vienna stands. The whole of this tract is said to have been given by Charlemagne to the Bishop of Passau. There is much to delight the visitor who has time to linger about this vineyard district of the river, much variety in the way of mountain and rocky scenery, many fascinating old villages, towns and ruins. For the most part the places of chief importance, the places most promising as centres in which to stay, are on the left bank — though, as will be seen, there are exceptions. Indeed, the very first object that arrests attention is on the right, where the rocky hills are once more close to the water-side. This is the castle of Schonbiihel — a white-towered building standing on a massy rock at the very point where the valley narrows between the hills. Schonbuhel, unlike so many of the Danubian castles, is still inhabited. The slender tower gives a singular appearance to the rock-perched group of buildings, and it is without surprise that we learn that this romantically placed cheiteau has its ghost, and even — according to one story — a more sinister visitant in the person of Lucifer himself. The ghost — I am not quite clear whether of the murderer or of the murdered — haunts the place in consequence of a horrid crime said to have been 134 THE DANUBE perpetrated by an old-time owner of the place who, believing his wife to be guilty of some offence, killed her, apparently without any inquiry into the matter of her supposed crime. The story has been rendered into ballad form, and the following stanzas indicate the nature of the tragedy : " The blood still reddens the mouldering oak, Where, clasping the blessed rood, And bowing her neck to the headsman's stroke, Fair Cunigonda stood. * I know not the crime for which I die, My cruel lord,' said she, ' But my cause I leave to God on high — My untimely death to thee ! ' Down fell the axe — the life-blood streamed : But long ere morning prime, Through the baron's hall a maniac screamed — * She was guiltless of the crime ! ' " o' Beyond the chapel — with its model of Bethlehem — are the mountain-sides, close-grown with maple, oak and other trees. All through the Wachau, roads may be followed close neighbouring the river along either bank — that on the left offering the greatest variety of places to be visited, that on the right passing for the most part through wilder scenery, but both affording ever-changing picturesque views. Entering the narrowed valley, we soon see ahead of us, high on the rocky cliff and backed by dark trees, another of those common objects of this great river — a ruined castle. Shortly before reaching it, however, we have on the left the small market town of Aggsbach. A little place, more picturesque from the river than when entered in the dusk after long walking on a day of heavy rain, when its narrow ways are deep in mud and an eligible gasthaus seems difficult to find. Though AG(iS'l)- IN THE WACHAU 135 a market town by description, it is to appearance but a small, quiet village. A river-side inn with external steps and deep stone balcony has quite an Oriental appearance. Klein Aggsbach, on the right bank shows that, comparatively, this town is not to be regarded as small. A place of call for the steamers, Aggsbach is the port of debarkation for those who would visit the dominating ruins ahead, which may be reached by ferry from a point somewhat further down stream. The dominating ruins are those of Aggstein — once a dreaded name on the Danube, for the lordly owners of this castle were famous, even among the many robber knights of the river, for their pertinacity in preying upon travellers. Approached from either down or up-stream, Aggstein, perched on the summit of a thickly wooded hill about six hundred feet above the water, and backed by higher hills, also densely timbered, is strikingly impressive, while from its extensive ruins is to be obtained a view that for beauty will vie with any of those we have seen. The ruins, which are attained by paths up through the wood, form — and justly — one of the most celebrated bits on the river ; and it is only fitting that to such a place should be attached romantic and grim stories. The place must have been veritably impregnable in the days when its owners lorded it over this stretch of the Danube and took their toll of all passing boats. If all the strongholds of robber knights were " flourishing " contemporaneously, it is wonderful how any boat ever completed its journey. Two at least of the lords of Aggstein seem to have come to a well-deserved end. One of these, Schrecken- wald, who flourished in the fifteenth century is pro- verbially immortalized in an Austrian saying which describes those who are in a hopeless plight as being " in Schrcckenwald's rose-garden." 136 THE DANUBE The worthy whose name is thus remembered is said to have been not only the most expert but also the most unscrupulous robber knight of his day, and to have been the terror of the surrounding country. When he had despoiled his prisoners of all that they possessed he would have them brought into his presence and dropped through a trap-door into what he playfully termed his "rose garden." This was a dungeon, or enclosed ravine in the rock on which the castle was built, and those who were not killed by the fall were left to die of starvation or cold. How many victims he thus murdered is not recorded, but they are said to have been many — and of the number dropped into the " rose garden " but one escaped, A youthful knight of the neighbourhood, having been dismounted in a skirmish with some of Schreckenwald's henchmen, was borne to the castle before the robber tyrant. It is said that to Schreckenwald's enmity towards any captive was, in this case, added jealousy, for the knight had won favour in the eyes of a lady who had rejected the baron's advances ; the young man was therefore promptly sentenced to the "rose garden," and the sentence as promptly carried out. Conscious of a good deed accomplished in the removal of a rival, and grateful to his retainers, the baron gave up that day and the next to an orgy. At the close of the second day the inhabitants of the castle, deeming themselves in their usual state of security, retired to rest that they might be ready to start on some fresh foray in the morning. They little knew that retribution was nigh. Suddenly the blaring of bugles and the clashing of arms sounded, and the astonished baron found himself confronted in the torch- light by what he imagined must be the apparition of his latest victim. For a moment he was dumbfounded, but only for a moment ; rushing forward sword in hand THE WACHAU 137 he shouted, " Wert thou the Archfiend hnnself, Schreckenwald shall still be lord of Aggstein." The ferocity of despair availed him not ; he was disarmed and promptly hanged in his own entrance hall, while his robber band of retainers was destroyed, some of the men being killed in the fighting and others driven over the battlements to destruction on the rocks below. Another baron, seemingly a worthy predecessor of Schreckenwald, was Hadmar the " Hound of Kuenring," who in the early part of the thirteenth century was lord of Aggstein (and of Durrenstein also). This robber- chief, in alliance with his brother, made Aggstein terrible, ravaging the country round, and being in all ways a law unto themselves. They became known as " The Hounds," and long successfully defied all efforts to subdue them. At length, in 123 1, a merchant who had already suffered much at the hands of the robbers, proposed to the Emperor that he should be permitted to employ a trick. " I will freight," said he, " a vessel at Ratisbon, laden with the most costly merchandise : the tidings will soon reach the robbers at Aggstein. Thirty stout knights shall lie concealed in the vessel, and when Hadmar rushes down from his castle, and boards us with a few of his vassals, thinking to plunder some peaceable merchants, the knights shall rush out upon, and overpower him, while I push off from the shore." Force having failed, the Emperor was quite willing that the stratagem should be tried, and the merchant duly set out as arranged. " Long before he had passed the Strudel, however, the welcome news of a very rich prize being on the water was told in the castle of Aggstein ; and no sooner was the barge in sight, than the tower-bell, as usual, proclaimed the approach of booty. The baron, attended by a few choice vassals, pounced at once upon the expected prey, and was received on board with tokens of the 138 THE DANUBE most abject submission. * What is thy cargo, knave ? ' said he to the merchant. ' Silk, brocade, and wine,' answered the merchant — ' with,' but here he hesitated. 'With what ?' interposed the baron sternly ; 'speak on thy life ! ' ' With a cask or two of specie for the Duke's treasury,' said the merchant in a half whisper. ' Specie ! the very thing we want,' roared the baron. * Hand up the metal, instantly.' 'The metal for the baron — in- stantly ! ' cried the merchant, and suddenly throwing back the canvas, thirty glittering lances were levelled at the baron's breast. ' There is thy metal, Herr Baron,' said the skipper, pointing to the thirty mailed warriors who instantly surrounded him and his suite. The surprise and consternation of the tyrant may be imagined, but cannot be described. He was immedi- ately secured and committed to the hold ; and never did barge anchor under the walls of Vienna with more welcome news than when it was noised abroad that the Robber-Chief, Hadmar of Aggstein, was a prisoner on board." From the lofty ruins with their sinister memories we pass on through the continuously beautiful Wachau with its steep, wooded mountains on the right, its lower hills on the left, on the sides of which many vineyards soon become familiar. Several small villages are passed, and beyond Schwallenbach on the left we see an extra- ordinary piece of rocky formation running in wall-like fashion down the face of a hill-side to the river. Softer rock has been worn away until the ridge remains very much like a roughly made wall built of irregular-sized blocks of stone — like one of our west-country stone field-walls exaggerated to a gigantic extent. It is little wonder that local lore has ascribed to this ridge a demoniac origin. It is known as the Teufelsmauer, or Devil's Wall, but why the Devil concerned himself in erecting it I have not been able to ascertain further SI -I > 3 THE WACHAU 139 than the suggestion that he had taken it into his head to block up the Danube at this spot, but by some special intervention of Providence was stopped before the undertaking had got beyond the building of this wall. Where, for the new railway, a path has been blasted along the rock here, the lower end of the wall has been left intact by tunnelling through it. The first stop- ping place for the steamer after leaving Aggsbach is Spitz, a small town lying about the foot of a conical hill, scored to the top with vineyard lines, with vine- yards extending also up the neighbouring hills, while on the mountain-side above it are the picturesque ruins of an old castle. Spitz is regarded as the most important centre of the Wachau wine district, and so closely is every avail- able piece of ground utilized, that a local saying has it that the town is one in which the wine grows in the market place. The grape is not the only fruit grown here, for there are also many peach orchards, and quantities of this fruit are taken aboard before the boat continues its journey Vienna-wards. All along here the vineyards offer many pleasant pictures to the pedestrian who loiters about in October when the grape harvest is being gathered. From the narrow terraces on which the vines are grown along the steep hillsides barefooted men and women, boys and girls, are to be seen descend- ing with long pottle-shaped wooden baskets on their backs, piled high with fruit. Many times, too, great vats stand by the road-side at the foot of the vineyard, into which the grapes arc turned, and where they are pounded and squashed with great wooden clubs. Then a couple of oxen will come slowly along drawing a large barrel on a cart frame, and into this barrel a man "spoons" the juice from the great tub, much as our farm hands in country districts fill their water-carts from a pond. 140 THE DANUBE Spitz is a beautifully situated little town, with a pleasant market place dominated by a square church tower with steep wedge-shaped roof of many-coloured tiles. On the opposite side of the river is one of the Arnsdorfs — a cluster of houses about a steep-roofed church — half a dozen striking poplars and the wooded hills beyond. The Spitz castle ruins upon the bare dark rock are among the most picturesque of those we see, and represent an ancient place that belonged at one time to those great territorial magnates the bishops of Passau and at another time to some of those robber knights whose fastnesses were dotted with what must have been disquieting frequency along the course of the Danube. Beyond Spitz — about which it has opened out some- what — the valley again contracts, and the road on the left is cut through rugged rock, which in places almost overhangs the way. Looking back we have a beautiful view of Spitz, the light green of its surrounding vine- yards contrasting strikingly with the rock, the mountains and forests and the broad sweep of the green Danube, as seen under a cloudy sky with brilliant sunshine following on a heavy shower. A little beyond and we reach the small village of St. Michael with its old church, along the roof ridge of which are placed seven hares, to commemorate — so the local story runs — a time when the snowfall in the neighbourhood had been so heavy that the hares were seen playing on the church roof! The animal figures are as like deer, cows or horses as they are to hares ! The open-topped square tower of this old Gothic church is notable as being quite unlike any other that we see in the neighbourhood. Another story of this district, and of only little more than a hundred years ago, seems rather an incident of the Middle Ages than of the closing years of the eighteenth century. It is said that a poor lonely old woman had got the reputation among her neighbours of SVnZ VIXKVARDS THE WACHAU 141 being a witch and, therefore, when she was feeding her goat upon a hill-side she was shot with a glass bullet ; a severe thunderstorm which had arisen having been caused by her, according to the belief of her superstitious murderers. The next point of special interest along this lovely- bit of the river is Weissenkirchen, the villages of Wosendorf and Joching, with their orchards and vine- yards, being pleasant little places without any special feature to call for a halt. Weissenkirchen, however, is a place that certainly does call for a halt owing to that which it has to show in itself and as being situated where the valley has widened somewhat at one of the most beautiful points in the Wachau. Here, too, the vineyards penetrate close to the town, even further into it than they do at Spitz, for a low-sunk patch lies between the street by which the town is entered from the east and the railway station, the narrow paths or flights of steps that lead up from between the houses here and there lead us, too, in- evitably into vineyards. On one side of the town the steep shingle-covered roofs of the houses are close to the vineyard terraces above. The large church which stands on the rock above the houses — its entrance on a level with their roofs — is approached by a long covered- in flight of steps from the corner of the market place. Near the foot of this stairway is a quaint figure of St. John, with a red painted metal canopy like a great umbrella close over the figure's head. The characteristic wedge-roofed tower with its clock- faces near the south-west angle forms a strikingly picturesque object as seen from many points, especially from some of the narrow by-ways. Then, too, there are glimpses to be had into cellars, with their great wine presses with oak beams that, it is said, have done duty for three or four hundred years, and some wonderful old 142 THE DANUBE court-yards — the finest being the old tilting-yard at the north-western corner of the market place — entering which we are at once taken to a past of centuries ago. It is a quadrangle of old buildings with deep, arched embrasures on the ground floor, and above, with smaller arches, a balcony, from which presumably " in days of old when knights were bold and barons held the sway" fair ladies looked down and encouraged the contestants below. Now more or less used as a store-yard for fuel and other things the " Turnierhof " or Tilting-yard is yet a place to be visited ; and if it be as a German writer has it, that Weissenkirchen is a Mecca for artists, then we may well believe that this yard is for many of them the central shrine. There are many delightful places within easy reach of the little town, and from the vineyards above a bird's- eye view of the whole is to be had that is likely to be unforgettable if seen as I first saw it when, looking across it to the great river, the white mists of morning were clearing off and stretching like a silver girdle about the mountains on the further side. Beyond Weissenkirchen, the Danube takes a southerly turn round abrupt, bare and sometimes precipitous rocks. On the right is soon seen a flat valley with the roofs of Rossatz ; and directly ahead stands, from the sheer escarpment of the rock as it were, one of the places which most nearly in its traditions touches our English history, though even its name may not be known to any large proportion of those familiar with some details of the story it has to tell. This is Durnstein or Durrenstein, a small town between the face of the rocky cliffs and the river, with above it, striking from any point of view, the time-battered ruins of the castle in which it is said Richard Cceur de Lion passed fifteen months of weary imprisonment during the years 1 192-4. WEISSENRIRCHKN THE WACHAU 143 Seen as we approach Durrenstein down the river, the view is singularly fine. To the left of the town is a sheer mass of precipitous rock of all tones of yellow, where the cliff has been split away to cut the railroad. The crows wheeling about its jagged edge "show scarce so gross as beetles." From the group of old red-and- white buildings other jagged lines of rock and wall slant upwards, leading the eye to the ruined castle where they meet. At the back of the town, even within these " walls " are seen the narrow vineyard terraces, sometimes on scraps of ground that seem scarcely accessible to the cultivator. A traveller of many years ago said : " Of all the strongholds yet noticed in our passage from Ulm, it takes undisputed precedence ; and he who can pass with indifference the many feudal and monastic ruins which overlook the course of the Danube, will pause with up- lifted eye and awakened imagination, as the rock-built towers of Durrenstein flash upon his view. Its massive walls, embattled precipices and iron towers that survive the lapse of centuries, were of themselves amply suffi- ient to arrest attention and engage the stranger to pass a day within their gates ; but when he recollects that yonder donjon tower was the prison of Coeur de Lion, a new chord is touched in his heart — more especially in that of an Englishman — and as he passes under its ponderous gateway and muses in its grass-grown and deserted courts, he feels as if acted upon by some my- sterious influence — as if an invisible conductor beckoned him forward — as if the old kingly crusader himself accosted him with 'Quhat tydings from England ?'" If I cannot claim to have felt the spirit of the place in that fashion, it may be because seventy years have reduced the ruins to a yet more ruinous state, and so the illusion that the king might still be here anxious for " tydings " is little likely to arise. Though the little town itself is 144 THE DANUBE attractive, it is of course the ruined fortress that makes the strongest appeal, historically and sentimentally, to the British visitor. Whether approached by way of the scattered rocks on the eastern side, or by the pathvi^ay w^hich leads from near within the "ponderous gateway'' (to the town, not to the castle) up to the ruins, we find ourselves on the conical summit of rugged rock standing out at the end of a mountain spur among the sadly battered remains of the old castle. Here and there are great pieces of wall still standing, but the whole is in a time-battered, broken state which makes it difficult to recall the plan of the place. One tall piece of wall looks afar off curiously like a gigantic figure, and near at hand but little imagination is necessary to see in it the figure of the great crusader himself ! The view from the castle ruins up the river towards Weissenkirchen across to the mountain-surrounded level on which Rossatz stands and down-stream across a hemmed-in vine-grown battlefield towards Vienna, with the great monastery of Gottweih on a conical hill in the distance, is a most attractive one ; while between the ruins and the mountains is a narrow gorge, with beyond it the jagged edge of the extraordinary rock mass where a large part of it was blasted to make the railway which now runs though the hill on which Diirrenstein Castle stands. In the centre of the ruins is a gigantic, more or less roughly cubic, mass of granite out of which a windowless chamber has been roughly hewn, and here, says tradition, is the veritable prison in which Richard was confined by his implacable enemy, Duke Leopold of Austria. It was when returning from crusading in the east that Richard, travelling disguised through Austria — the Duke of which he had offended at Ascalon — was recognized and so fell into the hands of his enemy and came to be imprisoned in this powerful castle, under the charge of THE WACHAU 145 Hadmar, the father of that Hadmar the Hound of Kuenring, of whom we learned at Aggstein. The romantic story runs, that the place of Richard's imprison- ment being unknown, his faithful minstrel Blondel de Nesle set out, wandering all over Europe to learn if he could the fate or whereabouts of the King of England. Accidentally he learned that in Diirrenstein Castle some distinguished person was confined and guarded with unusual vigilance. Not unnaturally he thought that this mysterious prisoner must be the royal master whom he sought. He reached Diirrenstein, but could get no news as to who the prisoner was, and the gates of the castle were shut against him. Blondel then bethought him of a chanson which he and King Richard had com- posed together, and getting as near within hearing of the prisoner's place of concealment as he could, he sang his own part of the song : " Your beauty, lady fair, None view without delight, But still as cold as air, No passion you excite ; Yet this I patient see. While all are shunned by me." The minstrel paused, and at once came the second part of the chanson sung from within and proving beyond doubt the identity of the prisoner with the king of whom the minstrel was in search : " No nymph my heart can wound, If favours she divide. And smile on all around, UnwiUing to decide ; I'd rather hatred bear, Than love with others share." The wonderful metrical romance dealing with the life of Richard Cceur de Lion does not — ^judging by so much of it as was given by Sir Henry Ellis — refer to L 146 THE DANUBE the place of the king's incarceration by name ; therefore we may place here the wonderful incident of his wooing by Margery the daughter of the King of Almain — who should presumably be Duke of Austria — and of the way in which he won his nickname. Richard the prisoner and the King of Almain's son had had a buffeting duel. Richard received the first blow which made him stagger, but when he gave his blow in return the prince's " cheek bone was crushed ... he sank to the ground and instantly expired." " The offended monarch now sent in haste for his great council — ta " Earls, barons and wise clerks, To tell of these woeful werks — and explained to them his reasons for desiring the death of Richard, requesting them, if possible, to set aside the general law of Europe by which the persons of Kings were declared inviolable, and to order the immediate punishment of the traitor. The council took the matter into their serious consideration, debating during three days, and concluded by declaring them- selves incompetent to pass judgment : but one of them complaisantly recommended to the king a certain judge named Sir Eldrys, whose ingenuity in condemn- ing prisoners was thought to be unparalleled, and who would probably suggest to his majesty the means of vengeance. " Sir Eldrys, recollecting that he had seen in the royal menagerie a lion of prodigious size and fierceness, advised that the animal should be kept during some days without food, and then introduced to the prisoner, whom he would be very likely to devour ; so that his majesty, who could not be suspected of a secret intelli- gence with the lion, would obtain the gratification of his just revenge, without having infringed the law by passing sentence on a free and independent sovereign. This THE WACHAU 147 equitable project was of course adopted by the King ; and immediate orders were issued for carrying it into execution, " Margery, who had her spies in the council, being apprised of what had passed, instantly sent for her lover ; warned him of his danger ; proposed to him the means of escape from her father's territories ; and offered to accompany him in his flight, " With gold and silver, and great tresore, Enough to have for evermore . Richard said, ' I understand That were again the law of the land, Away to wend withouten leave : The King ne will I nought so grieve. Of the lion ne give I nought ; Him to slay now have I thought. / By prime, on the third day, I give thee his heart to prey.' " He then directed her to repair to the prison, with forty handkerchiefs of white silk, on the evening before the combat ; to order her supper in his cell ; to invite his two friends and the jailor to the entertainment, and afterwards to pass the night with him : and the princess, without staying to enquire how far this conduct was compatible with that scrupulous regard for her father's peace of mind by which Richard professed to be actuated, punctually obeyed all his directions. " In the morning, the tender Margery, ever trembling for her lover's safety and always fearless for her own, was with great difficulty persuaded to tear herself from the prison ; but having at length returned to her apart- ment, Richard bound round his arm the silken handker- chiefs, and recommending himself to God, calmly awaited the arrival of the lion. " The animal, attended by two keepers, and followed by the jailor, was then led in ; and, as soon as he was loosed, sprang forwards to seize his prey. Richard, 148 THE DANUBE starting aside, evaded the attack, and at the same time gave the monster such a blow on the breast with his fist as nearly felled him to the ground. The lion, lashing himself with his tail, and extending his dreadful paws, now uttered a most hideous roar, and prepared for a more violent assault ; but the hero, seizing his opportunity when the monster's jaws were extended, suddenly darted on him, drove his arm down the throat, and, grasping the heart, forcibly tore it out through the mouth together with a part of the entrails. Then, after piously returning thanks to Heaven for his miraculous victory, he snatched up the bleeding heart, and without meeting with any obstacle, marched with his trophy into the great hall of the palace. " The king at meat sat on des. With dukes and earls proud in press. The saler on the table stood : Richard pressed out all the blood, And wet the heart in the salt ; (The king and all his men behalt) Withouten bread the heart he ate. The king wonder'd, and said skeet : ' Y-wis, as I understand can, This is a devil and no man, That has my strong lion y-sla\ve, The heart out of his body drawe, And has it eaten with good will ! He may be called, by right skill King y-christened of most renown Strong Richard Coeur de Lion ! ' " If Richard was incarcerated in the chamber hollowed out of the great mass of granite, and that was at the time, as it was later, enclosed within walls, it is a little difficult to realize how the minstrel's voice ever penetrated the monarch's prison ; but the legend is so pleasant a one that it would perhaps be a more gracious task to find out how it might have been true, rather than to show how it is probably a fiction. The theme is one 3 THE WACHAU 149 that has inspired poets, painters, and musicians. When Gretry's opera on the subject of " Richard Cceur de Lion," was produced in Paris early in the nineteenth century, an artist was sent to Diirnstein to sketch the castle that the scenery might be true. Mrs. Hemans wrote a narrative poem on the subject of Blondel's search for his captive master, and described the position of the king's prison as though she had visited it : " He hath reached a mountain hung with vine. . . . The feudal towers that crest its height Frown in unconquerable might ; Dark is their aspect of sullen state, No helmet hangs o'er the massy gate, To bid the wearied pilgrim rest, At the chieftain's board a welcome guest ; Vainly rich evening's parting smile Would chase the gloom of the haughty pile, That midst bright sunshine lowers on high, Like a thunder cloud in a summer sky. . . . Lingering he gazed — the rocks around Sublime in savage grandeur frowned ; Proud guardians of the regal flood, In giant strength the mountains stood ; By torrents cleft, by tempests riven, Yet mingling still with the calm blue heaven." The story of Blondel is merely legendary, and it was probably only a sordid matter of ransom by which Richard Coeur de Lion won to freedom, and not owing to the devotion of his faithful minstrel. When Planche visited Durrenstein he described the castle keep as being " not unlike the fine ruin at Rochester." Either his memory did scant justice to Rochester, or else the ruins of Diirrenstein have become greatly damaged during the past seventy years, for to-day there is nothing to suggest a comparison between the great grim Norman keep on low ground near the Medway at Rochester, and the battered ruin which seems, as it were, to grow out of the jagged pinnacled rocks high above the Danube. ISO THE DANUBE From the neighbourhood of the castle run broken cliff edges south-easterly and south-westerly towards the Danube ; these have at some period been built up into actual walls for defence, and in olden pre-artillery times must have rendered the town which they enclose on two sides — the third being formed by the Danube — a very formidable place. So formidable indeed that, even after the introduction of artillery, it is said that the citizens were able to give a good account of themselves. For, in 1741, a party of French and Bavarian cavalry having got across the Danube, thought to surprise Diirrenstein and make it an easy prey, believing it to be undefended. The citizens of the place were equal to the occasion, having prepared themselves for such an emergency. They barred up their gates as well as they could, laid bored logs of timber with their edges blackened, on the walls, in imitation of cannon, chalked the rims of their hats, to give them the appearance of being bound with white lace, according to the uniform of their troops at that time, and parading up and down the ramparts — taking care that their hats only should be seen above the walls — with much blowing of trumpets and beating of drums, absolutely induced the enemy to believe that the place was strongly garrisoned ; and they accordingly wheeled to the right-about without firing a shot, to the infinite joy and amusement of the cunning inhabitants, who certainly well deserved their escape. The small town, with its irregular white houses, its glimpses into great wine-pressing cellars, its thick- walled, low-arched, crypt-like inns, its men with long pipes ever pendant from their mouths, its generous arch- ways — wide as the street itself — giving on to yards in which are seen great barrels, and the carts on which such barrels are carried, is quite an old-world place. Of the extent to which it is given over to wine I had an THE VVACHAU 151 illustration during my stay, when I saw boys busy