Chapter XIV

The rocky shoulder of Greben is all scarred and torn by the cuttings which are gradually eating off its rugged and dangerous spur. Farther down-stream a breakwater is in course of construction, intended to divert the current from a shallow; and at some distance below, the great black masses of drilling machines, all chains and iron posts and funnels, are seen anchored in mid-stream, where they are constantly at work blasting out a great ledge of rock which causes the rapids of the Jur.

The cheery engineers, who had watched our descent of the rapids with great interest, welcomed us when we landed with offers of substantial hospitality, and over a good dinner we discussed the one topic which had for us a common interest--the moods and caprices of the great river. When we left them, at two o’clock, we had still a paddle of some twenty-five miles before we should reach Orsova, where we proposed to pass the night, not thinking it would be possible to camp in the gorge. There would be no shelter from the violent up-stream wind until we reached the entrance of the defile, so there was need of haste. Below Greben the river sweeps around in a great curve from the south to the north-east, a mile or more in width, then suddenly narrows, and takes a remarkably straight course through a deep cleft in the mountains, until it bends sharply towards the south again at the Iron Gates. The gorge through which it passes is called the Kasan defile, and is far and away the most impressive and wonderful feature of the scenery along the whole river. Sheer limestone precipices many hundred feet in height rise up in grand simple masses on either side, and as we approached the gorge it looked as if some great convulsion of nature had wrenched the solid rocks asunder, leaving the deep and narrow chasm for the passage of the river. Before Count Széchényi built his road along the Hungarian bank, in 1840, there had been no practicable pathway through the defile since the great road built by Trajan for his soldiers and his army trains during his Dacian campaign. At the entrance, where the river is constricted to a width of only 180 yards, the straight cutting of the modern highway and the great score in the cliffs left by Trajan’s road are both prominent features in the landscape. Here the river rushes violently past a high rock in mid-stream, which causes a dangerous whirlpool just below, then plunges into the narrow cleft with a volume of water 200 feet or more in depth, and swirls and boils and throbs with great pulsations all along its swelling flood. Narrower and narrower becomes the gorge, higher and higher the cliffs, and strange currents and ominous whirls break the surface of the dark torrent. In the depths of the chasm there is almost twilight gloom, and in the impressive quiet the murmur of the impatient river sounds dull and low, like the breakers on a far-off sea-shore. Still closer and closer crowd the giant cliffs, until they almost touch. At last they force the mighty river into the narrow compass of 120 yards; and then, as if fatigued with the effort of strangling the resistless flood, withdraw again, and little by little the current gains its familiar breadth, and spreads out into a pleasant reach with high wooded hills, enclosing on the north a fertile valley with ripening cornfields, and piling high on the south their rugged summits almost perpendicularly

over the water’s edge. Here the Roman road is almost practicable in parts, and under a great towering precipice, where a projecting rock pushes out boldly into the deep channel, the great general caused, in the year 103, a tablet to be carved in the solid rock, on which may still be read the inscription:

IMP·CAESAR·DIVI·NERVAE·F·
NERVA·TRAIANVS·AVG·GERM
PONTIF·MAXMVS·TRIB·OT * *
***** RIAE·CO *****

commemorating his victory over nature as well as over man. Nature has not forgiven Trajan the desecration of this, one of her sublimest works, and in the lapse of centuries she has gradually eaten away the hard rock tablet, threatening it with utter destruction, in spite of the projecting stone above it, until solid masonry supports have been erected to hold the shattered inscription in its place. As we were sketching the spot, with its interesting traces of the Roman road showing where the posts were fastened to the rock to support the platforms necessary to widen the path, two natives came paddling up under the edge of the cliff in a dugout canoe, and moored their boat at the corner, where, on the old Roman road-bed, they had a little fishing camp. Canoe, implements, dress, were the same as in the days when their remote ancestors piloted Trajan’s galleys through the dangerous eddies of the defile. Dacia Felix is now only a name, and a shattered tablet and crumbling traces of the first great highway along the Danube alone remain to remind us of the great general’s conquests of this remote region, and to suggest something of the civilization he founded there. But the peasant is still unchanged in type and costume, speaks a language closely allied to the old Roman dialect, tills the ground and catches fish with the same rude implements that Trajan found in the hands of the happy barbarians of Dacia Felix.

It was long after dark before we steered our canoes by the twinkling lights of Orsova to the steamboat-landing there. The tinkle of gypsy music in the garden restaurant by the river-bank echoed across the silently-flowing stream, now silvered by the moon, which tardily rose above the great mountains. We heard again the soft accents of the Magyar tongue and the intoxicating strains of the csáardás. The wild gypsy leader poured his music into our eager ears, drawing his nervous bow under our very hat-brims, lest we should lose some quaver of the stirring chords. Long into the night we sat there, captive to the music and the beauty of the moonlit landscape, loath to lose one moment of the few precious hours that remained to us in bewitching, beloved Hungary.

Like all frontier towns, Orsova has a heterogeneous population, which gives interest to an otherwise dull and unattractive place. Besides its commercial importance on the river, and also on the through railway line from Budapest to Bucharest, it is, in summer-time at least, the halting-place for the great multitudes of Roumanians and Hungarians who resort to the baths of Méhadia, or the Herkulesbad, as it is usually called, from the old Roman name, Thermae Herculis, a most picturesque and luxurious establishment of sulphur baths a few miles inland, in a wonderful gorge of the Carpathians.

Among the motley collection of peasants seen in the streets, the Turk in all his squalor is met here for the first time on the Danube. By the Treaty of Berlin, the small fortified island of Ada Kaleh, three miles below Orsova, was ceded to Austria, and the citadel was ordered to be razed. But as the whole population consisted of Turks, and there seemed to be no humane method of getting rid of them, they were allowed to linger on, not acquiring rights of citizenship in Austria, nor yet responsible to the Sultan in any way, paying no taxes to either Austro-Hungary or Turkey. The wily Turk makes the most of his position, and drives a thriving trade in all sorts of knick-knacks, picks up a good income out of the crowd of tourists who visit the island for a sight of a real Turk in his own home, and sells the best tobacco that can be bought north of the Balkans, and at prices which argue against his assurance that he has paid duty for it at the Austrian customs. Just beyond this island the Danube bends sharply to the south-east, and three or four miles below the Roumanian frontier tumbles its full, broad current over a great ledge of rocks, which for a mile and a half in width extend across the river, and leaving only a narrow and intricate channel for steamers near the Roumanian shore, always dangerous to navigation, and at low-water impassable except by boats of shallow draught. In this mile and a half of rapids the river falls sixteen feet, and the broad defile at this point is known as the Iron Gates.

The Turks originally applied the name Iron Gates (Demir Kapou) to the rapids just below Drenkova as well as to those near Orsova, calling them respectively Upper and Lower Iron Gates. The name, which signified obstructions to navigation rather than natural gateways in the mountains, is now commonly applied to the lower rapids only, and the traveller who has passed through the Kasan defile usually expects to find a still more wonderful gorge at the Iron Gates below. He is sure to be disappointed, for the Iron Gates are only a series of dangerous rapids at the point where the river broadens out after leaving the mountains, and the scenery there is, by comparison with that of the Kasan defile, tame and uninteresting. With the Carpathian ends the series of remarkable gorges and defiles which has marked the course of the river at intervals from its source down, for the vast plain of Roumania extends from the foot-hills here to the shores of the Black Sea. The Iron Gates have been since earliest history of great military and political importance, forming as they do a natural barrier on the great water-way between the East and the West. According to Strabo, the Danube ended here and the Ister began, for the lower river was known to the Greeks as the Ιστρος. There is no record of any mention of the upper Danube before the first century B.C., when it was discovered by the Roman armies under Cæsar, who probably gave it the name Danubius. Max Müller, in his study of the origin of the name of the Danube, says that the Latin name is probably a translation of the Aryan word _danu_, which, in the védas, means moist, or an adaptation of the old Persian word of the same spelling which means a river. It is scarcely necessary to add that the river has now a different name in several of the countries through which it flows. The Germans call it the Donau, the Hungarians the Duna, the Roumanians the Dunari, and the Servians, Bulgarians, and Russians the Dunai.

The Iron Gates marks in the history of our trip the loss of the Admiral of the fleet who, having exhausted all the time at his disposal, was obliged to leave us here, to the regret of all of us and his own intense disappointment.

The International Corps of Engineers, who are carrying out the improvements of navigation on all the rapids of the Carpathian gorge, have begun to cut a canal through the rocks at the Iron Gates along the Servian bank. The work has been in progress since the autumn of 1890, and will be completed in 1893. Trajan’s engineers actually completed part of a similar canal a few rods farther inland, and the material of the ancient enbankments is now employed in the construction of the modern dikes. Like the conscientious travellers we were, we inspected the works, and at the invitation of the engineers, spent a pleasant half-day there. In common with so many other undertakings the world over, the labor is mostly in the hands of the Italians, who look exactly like so many workmen on the Croton Aqueduct. At noon they gathered at the doorway of the ГОСТИОНИЦА НЕВ ЈОРК--GASTHAUS NEWY JORK--quite the same as at the corner groceries of the One-hundred-and-something Street above the Harlem River, and only left the spot during the hour of rest to watch the futile rage of a flock of Servian and Roumanian geese at a sleepy Hungarian eagle chained to a perch--an active symbol of a possible political situation which appealed strongly to the ready Italian wit.

We had our usual enemy, a violent head-wind, on the day we trusted our fleet to the mercies of the Pregrada rapids at the Iron Gates, and we had a busy quarter of an hour escaping the whirlpools and avoiding the cross-seas. Unable from our low position to judge of the best channel in the surging waves, we kept as straight a course as the angry and baffling currents would permit, and came out safely in the comparatively smooth waters below, where we had a moment to look at the landscape from mid-stream, and to vote it disappointing after the grand scenery of the Kasan defile. For a mile or two farther on we found we must steer with care, for vicious swirls would suddenly appear and almost snatch the paddles from our hands. Great sturgeon weirs near the Servian shore marked the end of the violent currents, and after passing these we floated tranquilly away down a reach dotted all over with gourds marking the nets and sturgeon lines, which here are set on every side. A pleasant open country was now before us, with hot yellow hills and a town on either hand--Kladovo, with brick fortress and modern earthworks, on the Servian shore, and Turnu Severin high up on a bluff across the river just below. As we had not yet landed in Roumania, we decided to coast along the left bank and see if the landing-place was more interesting than the long straggling modern town which looked so commonplace and unattractive. As we drifted down close to the groups of quaint craft, studying

these novel vessels, the first we had seen with masts and sails, we noticed, on the river-bank below, the ruined pier of Trajan’s bridge, and thought we would land there and make a sketch of it. As we passed the town we saw a soldier in a white linen uniform trying his best to keep pace with us; but as he made no sign, we did not dream he had any other motives than those of curiosity. Just above the ruins a party of soldiers was bathing, a sentinel stood guard in front of a sentry-box, and a few rods farther down men were washing horses, and women were beating clothes on the rocks. We turned our bows towards the bank at the ruined pier, when a sharp hail from the sentinel caused us to look up. “Keep off!” he commanded in vigorous Roumanian. But we, seeing no fortifications anywhere, and having no more sinister intentions than the mild pursuit of art, knew no reason why we should not go ashore where the natives were at work, and continued to paddle slowly towards the mud bank. “Keep off! keep out in the stream!” he yelled again. “Is there a war here?” we asked, with an attempt at humor. “No; but you sha’n’t land! Keep off, or I’ll shoot!” “Shoot away; you can’t hit!” we retorted, believing it to be the idle threat of a soldier only half in earnest. But he grew more and more excited as we approached, and, drawing a cartridge from his pouch, showed it to us, and pushed it into his rifle. Just at this moment the soldier whom we had seen running along the shore came up breathless, and took command of the military force, promptly ordering the sentry to cover us with his rifle, until the bathing soldiers might seize our canoes. We held off for a few moments, just out of reach, and then, thinking the farce had gone far enough, went ashore and surrendered ourselves to the corporal, the sentry, and the dozen half-naked soldiers. Armed with two expensive and hitherto useless passports, we followed the corporal a long distance into the town to the headquarters, showed our papers to the officer of the day, who immediately gave us our liberty, with polite apologies for the annoyance his men had caused us. When we reached the canoes again, we distributed cigarettes to the bathing party who had guarded our fleet, and sent a few up the bank to the belligerent sentinel, who did not scorn the gift from his recent enemy. A little Jew boy standing near, not having received his share of the cigarettes, remarked, with some feeling and unconscious humor, “If the sentinel had fired at you, I suppose you’d have given him cigars!”

Floating down a great loop of the river in a dry and yellow landscape, we recovered from the excitement of our first adventure with the military, and, as we went along, watched the chattering Servians harvesting on one shore, and the Roumanian women, in the simple costume of white linen chemise, and long woollen fringe hanging behind from the girdle which binds a brilliantly colored apron to the waist, drawing water in classic-shaped jars, or spinning

from the distaff as they walked. Now and then groups of men so resembling the old Dacians, with loose tunic and trousers, sandals, broad belt, and sheepskin cap, that they almost looked like masqueraders, wandered over the arid slopes, spots of brilliant white on a background of sunny yellow. Even the soldiers we saw at the little huts which now stood on the bank at frequent intervals, were as barbaric in appearance as the peasant, and could only be recognized as military by the accoutrements they carried. Along one placid reach we came upon a great fleet of dugout canoes, each with two Servians, floating down with the current, dragging clumsy nets as they went. Landing below the little village, whose red-tiled roofs peeped out from among thick foliage, they drew in their nets, towed their boats up against the stream, and, chattering all the while with incessant vigor, drifted down again as before. Almost the only houses to be seen on the Roumanian shore were the huts of the pickets, which occupied every point, and guarded every possible landing-place. We realized the fact but slowly, and only after some experience, that we were now under the eye of military supervision, from which we were not to escape until we should paddle out into the Black Sea.