Chapter VII

The harmonizing mists of early morning silvered the tawny surface of the Danube, and softened the jagged outlines of Dürrenstein, on the crowning pinnacle of the rocky spur which thrusts its shoulder boldly out from the wooded flanks of higher summits behind, and stands sentinel over the little village at its base, and the sunny hill-side vineyards and valley beyond. Our camp, in a little glade by a backwater nearly opposite the ruin, was so peaceful and quiet that something of the repose of the place crept over our restless spirits, and, for the first time since we began to coquet with the nervous currents of the whirling stream, we felt a keen desire to pause in our onward rush, an ambition to extend our horizon, to climb above the river-bank, to explore the gorges that fascinated us with their mysterious gloom, to linger yet a while in the great defile where every peak bears the ruins of a noble castle, and every hamlet has a history crowded with tales of minstrelsy and chivalry, and enriched by familiar legends and interesting traditions. Our eyes, keen to observe vigorous outlines of mountain forms, had discovered in this defile the most impressive landscapes the river had yet unfolded before us, and it was with a sense of proper dramatic climax that we found that Dürrenstein--the very name of which set free a flood of childish memories of Cœur de Lion, of Blondel, of ladies fair and chivalrous knights, of robbery and ransom--was the very outpost of the chain of ruins which had serrated the skyline through the whole defile, and looked down upon the gem of all the river reaches. I may as well confess that my idea of the geographical situation of the castle had hitherto been in the region of hazy uncertainty, if not actually in the humiliating penumbra of utter ignorance. Its position, then, had the added charms of surprise and novelty.

The towers and arches, high on the bare summit of the rock; the half-ruined walls, skirting each projecting spur, and straggling away down the steep, rough declivity, embracing with diverging ramparts and frequent projecting towers the little town on the ledge by the river below, with its castle, its Gothic church edifice, disfigured by utilitarian restoration, and defiled by stores of grain, and confining within the mediæval limits the quaint and crowded jumble of shops and dwellings--the charm of this unique situation, and the vivid memory of the traditions connected with the spot, were stronger even than the wily arguments of the beautiful effects on the river, and the fascinations of the exhilarating, throbbing current that, in spite of paddle, almost swept us past the landing we had chosen. But we conquered both the water and the impulse bred of its restless power, and clambered, broad-chested and full of pride at our victory, up a narrow cañon, with dark, frowning rocks overhead, shale and shingle underfoot, and the refreshing, half-forgotten odors of pine and warm, dry earth in our nostrils. Some distance up the gorge a steep, slippery grass slope extends upward between two rough pine-clad crests to a little depression in the ridge behind the ruin, and to the lower gate of the castle itself. Multicolored butterflies hovered in the sunlight, the grass and rock crevices were gay with flowers, and our botanist gathered, as we went, wild pinks, columbine, and anemone, and panted out to our eager ears the Latin names of scores of mountain plants. Our steps, retarded by these botanical delights, not to say delayed by the unaccustomed exercise, and our lungs expanding with a vigor unknown in the lazy life in the canoes, we were long in reaching the first point from which we could look down upon the wonderful panorama of mountain and river, valley and scattered towns. Our world had indeed been too narrow, our horizon much too low. The giantess of a river from whose tyranny we had just escaped lay like a shining narrow lake below us, its beautiful curves contrasting with the harsh lines of the mountains, which met in an apparently impenetrable wall beyond. From the height at which we stood we could not see its eddies nor hear the hiss of its rapid flow. We were for the moment quite beyond the power of its spell.

The castle ruin bears so many traces of the destruction of successive sieges and consequent restorations that as it now stands it makes an architectural and archæological puzzle which we felt quite unable to struggle with. In general plan it is not unlike other mediæval strongholds, with yard and keep, watch-towers and gates, banquet-hall and chapel, and with extensive outworks intended to protect the little town of Dürrenstein, at once its weakness and its strength. Utterly neglected by the owner, whoever he may be, the perfection of its masonry and the wonderful quality of the mortar have alone prevented it from becoming long since an ugly mass of worthless rubbish. Most of the later constructions have, indeed, fallen down, or have served so long as convenient quarries that they have almost disappeared. We did not find without some difficulty the traces of the grand old stairway that led from the lower enclosure on the town side up into the pile of buildings at the top and the older part of the castle. Scrambling up a moraine of small stones and mortar, an unsightly avalanche, where the noble flight of steps once mounted the ledge, we came to an irregular open space, now roofless, but with doorways almost perfect and well-preserved window penetrations. From this passages lead into towers on the edge of the precipice, and into a small vaulted chapel, where rows of Byzantine saints cover the walls with dim visions of red and yellow, their halos now but circlets of rough holes where jewels were once embedded in the mortar, and their rigid countenances disfigured by the weathering of centuries of storms and frosts that have fought nature’s battle on this bleak and dizzy crag. The northern wall of the open space just alluded to is a solid ledge of rock hewn square and true, and in this wall is an opening like a doorway, but bearing no traces of hinges or of any other contrivance to close it, which leads into a spacious room cut out of the hard stone. If this was the place where Richard Cœur de Lion was confined, not only could no minstrel song ever have reached his ears, but no sound of the world outside the castle less startling than the crash of thunder ever have broken the hateful quiet of this rock dungeon. The summit of the ledge is reached by a narrow stairway, casually twisting and turning as the inequalities of the surface dictated to the builder, and bears traces of a much-worn passageway and of huge floor-beams. This was once enclosed by walls of great height and exceptional solidity. From the ordinary indications of construction it is proper to assume that here was the original building, enlarged and altered a good deal since the twelfth century, but still preserving much of its old shape. Portions of huge towers and jagged edges of apartment walls, where immense pieces were blown out and down into the chasm below when the Swedes destroyed this stronghold in the Thirty Years’ War, now alone remain to give a meagre idea of its grandeur and unique strength. Unapproachable except across the narrow depressed ridge behind the summit, and this entrance defended by overhanging towers and a series of walls, it withstood many sieges, and no doubt harbored many a robber baron whose descendants now enjoy the titles and wealth which throw a dazzling glamour over the methods of their acquisition.

For a long time we enjoyed to the full the view up the defile and down the broad valley where the river, spreading out into a net-work of small streams, disappears in a screen

of wooded islands. Away to the south-east the great Benedictine monastery of Göttweig shows an imposing mass of white on the rounded hills that bound the Tullnfeld, and stretch off to mingle their summits with the broad, dark patch of the Wienerwald in the extreme distance. Far beyond the low islands lies Tulln, one of the oldest towns on the Danube, the Comagenæ of the Romans, referred to in the “Niebelungenlied” as an important place, and of historical interest as the point where the great army assembled in 1683 to deliver Vienna from the hands of the hated Turk. Dotted along the hill-sides and in the broad valley on the left bank of the river are many prosperous little towns.

The insidious influence of the guide-book stole upon us unawares as we began to ponder over the history of the region within the range of our uninterrupted vision. Our imaginations, stimulated now by the mention of these names, wandered from the realities of the Napoleonic campaigns, through the dim traditions of crusading days, back to the times when the Roman fleets crowded the narrow channels at the busy stations on the river-bank. The germ of latent restlessness thus grew like a noxious fungus in our minds; contentment and peace vanished like a faint odor. This history was but stale, and the study of it unprofitable. Myths and legends were like poetry and music, to be taken only when the spirit yearns for them. Reality is now before us; teeming modern life awaits us beyond those distant hills. A new nervousness and a new ambition of progress are upon us--new because there opened to our mental vision, at the mention of Islam, broad and fascinating vistas of the Orient, of strange lands and stranger peoples, of types new to our pencils, of colors to tempt the strongest tints on our palettes.

Vienna, hidden from us by the dark mass of the Wienerwald, is, for us at least, the last station before that mysterious East towards which the resistless current rushes below us, and whither our impatient canoes shall carry us through bewitching plains of Hungary, wild Carpathian gorges, and savage regions of Servia, Bulgaria, Roumania, and Russia, to the shores of the Black Sea. What a force the very mention of these names has upon us, and how we chafe at a moment’s delay! Castles and churches will keep, but what of that great mysterious land beyond those distant hills? Railroads have scarred the fertile plains, and have made the remote valleys and mountain gorges hideous with iron and raw stone. Customs have changed and costumes have disappeared. Even the Turk, so long the master of the lower Danube, has now sullenly withdrawn to the Bosporus and the Dardanelles. We must get on, for in our impatience it seems as if these changes are but the work of a day, not of a generation, and unless we hasten we shall be too late.

Many and many a time had we roundly cursed the canalization of the river which gave us for a water-line only the dull angle of a stone dike. But after leaving the village of Dürrenstein, which at the last moment we found, to our surprise, to be a favorite resort of Viennese artists, and after a brief pause for luncheon at Stein, with its obnoxious river improvements, we found ourselves very glad to follow the stone dikes through the maze of channels, and later in the day to utilize the stone-work in a way we had never anticipated. We were swept along by a current so rapid that our pace permitted no hesitation in the choice of route among the monotonous willow islands. Through openings in the trees along the bank we occasionally saw pleasant villas and clusters of houses reflected in the glassy lagoons, and here and there a sportsman in search of wild-fowl paddled along behind the dike. Sudden wind and rain squalls swept across the river in the late afternoon, rudely interrupting our sentimental meditations, and approaching darkness forced us at last to land. Under the friendly lee of bushes growing in the crevices of the masonry embankment we at last succeeded in checking our too willing canoes, and drew them up reluctantly, and only after it was evident that we had to choose between the ragged platform of the dike and the sodden swamps which extended for miles away from the main stream. It must be understood, by-the-way, that the embankments follow the large curves of the main channel, not forming a continuous dike like that along a canal or a polder, but leaving here and there an opening where the stiller water from the artificial lagoons joins the flowing stream. In these side branches or lagoons the water is frequently clear and pellucid, and in them, indeed, we found the first and only “blue Danube” we had seen from the start. Our visions of the sunny East had been forgotten in the struggle with the violent squalls and at the prospect of a night on the water, and as we hauled the canoes up on the firm stone-work of the dike and explored the snail-infested morass behind it, we accepted the unæsthetic situation on the well-drained platform, and were even grateful to the engineers who had spoiled the river for sketching, but had improved it, at this point at least, for camping purposes. In the alder swamp behind our camp a great gushing spring of clean Danube water, filtering through the dike, abundantly supplied this the most desirable luxury of a bivouac. There is more than one compensation, we thought, for this annoying desecration of the river scenery.

With the brilliant sunshine and drying air of the next morning returned the eager anticipations of the day before. The river was full of life. Great flat-boats and rafts, old friends from the river Traun, drifted past us as we prepared to start. The raftsmen laboring at the great sweeps gave us the morning greetings with a true ring of hearty and honest good-will, and shouted “Auf baldiges Wiedersehen” as they swung along down the reach. We had long since learned that the old adage that the race is not always to the swift might be as well illustrated by the active canoe and the cumbersome raft as by the hare and the tortoise, and we knew that while we were giving our boats their morning toilet the rafts would be surging along at the rate of three or four miles an hour, and would reach their destination near Vienna long before we should.

Tulln, seldom visited by the traveller on account of the superior attractions of Vienna, has more than one relic which repays careful examination and study. Adjoining the much-restored church stands a small decagonal Byzantine baptistery, with circular interior not over twenty feet in diameter. An Early Gothic doorway grafted on the original edifice, and a complete restoration of the whole as late as 1873, have not essentially altered its general appearance, for the naïve irregularity of its plan, the noble proportion of its sides, and the purity of its characteristic ornamentation survive all the eccentricities of ancient as well as modern tinkering. The great church has been distorted by successive additions and rebuildings during several centuries, and little remains of its original Byzantine dignity. As for the little dull town itself, the name, familiar to us in poetry as well as in the recorded events of history, is the chief proof to the casual observer that it is one of the oldest, and was for a long time one of the most important, towns on the Danube. Many of the houses are probably built out of material quarried from the ancient palaces and fine old mediæval churches which, ruined in the severe sieges and conflagrations, had yielded up the treasures of stone and marble which the wanton destruction of Roman temples had contributed to their erection. Little of the spirit of that ancient architecture has survived the change and destruction, for modern Tulln is as plain and meagre of invention as stone and mortar can make it. Of all the great Roman buildings which once stood here, a single broken altar, moss-grown and neglected, in the shadow of the baptistery, remains as a monument to the early splendor of this provincial town. By what chance it has escaped the stone-mason’s hammer no one can tell. Perhaps the delicate lines of its mouldings and the grace of its shattered figures may have secured it a place among the paraphernalia of the Byzantine church, and thus it had lost its identity as a relic of heathen worship. Would that the mute eloquence of its pathetic beauty had the voice of a brazen trumpet to denounce the modern restorer, whose touch is death to the charms of all art!

The commonplace aspect of the river-front let us down gently to the ugliness of the railway bridge, which stretches its rigid arm across the fine reach of the river just below Tulln, and screens with its hideous framework the beauties of the landscape below. The up-river navigation became hideously mechanical as well. Puffing, crawling, wheelless steamers groaned and clanked as they pulled their ugly black hulks against the current by a long chain lying in the bed of the stream. Huge iron barges, the most helpless of monsters without the partnership of a tug, added their shapeless masses to the procession of mechanical freaks that indicated the proximity of a large manufacturing city. Distracted by these new dangers to our navigation, and by the vigorous opposition of a strong head-wind, we had scarcely time to notice the great vine-clad hill which crowds the river on the right bank, and shelters under its towering declivity the extensive Augustinian abbey of Klosterneuberg, before we found ourselves slipping along a high stone-faced quay, and saw in the smoky distance the great rotunda on the Prater in Vienna, and the straight lines of the numerous railway bridges there. In the little village of Kahlenbergerdorf our waterman instincts led us to a humble inn, where we found, to our delight, all the raftsmen we had been meeting since the camp at the mouth of the Traun, assembled for their mid-day meal, and for a final friendly glass before returning up-river to start again on another downward voyage. We needed not to know their names; they did not even ask us ours, nor desire to learn about our customary occupation; the masonic bonds of kindred experiences and similar trials and dangers of the long journey made us friends without further introduction. They were old water-rats, they said, and though we could claim to be but the tiniest mice of aquatic tastes, our parting with them in the flickering shadows of the garden, surrounded by brigades of beer-glasses, was tinged with a genuine regret that we should no longer hear their cheery voices of a morning, nor see their honest faces again.