reach, very like the Hudson in scenery, to the little coaling-station of Drenkova. We trimmed our canoes with unusual care, tested our paddles, stowed away all loose articles, and put everything in fighting trim. Although we did not propose to undergo the humiliation of following a pilot through the rapids, we thought it best to take all reasonable means to find the best channel, and we therefore landed at Drenkova and consulted the agent of the steamship company there. He could give us but very few directions which were of any use, but offered us a pilot, and advised us strongly not to at tempt the passage alone. But the sight of puffing steamers slowly dragging loaded barges up the stream was to our minds satisfactory proof of the nature of the obstructions, and, a little impatient at the delay, we pushed off, followed by repeated cautions and confused directions.

Just below Drenkova the Danube bends to the south, and makes its first angry dash over the ledges of rock that stretch between the sheer cliffs on the Servian side and the rocky, wooded heights opposite. The river was about the average height on the day we went down, and no rocks showed above the surface. A strong head-wind so disturbed the water that we were unable to judge of the run of the currents, nor exactly tell where the rapids really were until we were in the midst of them. To add to our difficulties, several steamers were towing up stream, and the wash from their paddles, necessary to be avoided at all times, increased the turmoil of the rushing waters. There was nothing to do, then, but to take our own course far enough away to avoid the steamer wash, if possible, and still near enough the main channel to escape the whirlpools, which we had been told were the greatest dangers of the passage. Be tween this Scylla and Charybdis the way was not easy, but we paddled steadily forward, breasting the waves, throwing spray mast high, and plunging along with great speed. Suddenly between two of the canoes a great vortex appeared, and with giddy revolving motion seemed to rush on viciously in chase of the foremost boat. Never were paddles used with greater vigor or better skill, and the dainty crafts swept gracefully around on the outer ring of the whirl pool, just out of reach of the resistless

clutch of the swirl, until the yawning vortex gradually closed up again and its force was idly spent. The Danube had given us a notion of what it might do if trifled with.

A second rapid followed the first, not far below it, at the end of a broad reach surrounded by high mountains, and although we were not conscious of any great increase in the speed of the current, we heard in a few moments the roar of the Greben rapids, the longest and most difficult of navigation above those at the Iron Gates. As we came near we saw a line of white water reaching across from shore to shore, apparently without a break. We were speedily approaching this rank of tossing waves, where jets of glittering spray flew high in the air, when we fortunately saw a steamer passing up near the Servian shore, and paddled rapidly across to find the channel, where we would be less likely to meet the only enemy we feared-the whirlpools. Before we had time to deliberate on the best passage among the rocks we were in the midst of the tumbling, dashing waters, and almost before we caught our breath again we were in a comparatively still pool under the immense crag of Greben, which, pushing far out into the stream and narrowing the channel, causes the current to flow with great swiftness over the jagged ledges of rock that dam the river at this point. In our exhilarating dashes through the waves we had not shipped a spoonful of water, although our decks had been constantly awash, even to the very top of the coamings. As we neared the last pitch of the river at this point we had acquired such confidence in our canoes that we dashed boldly into the roughest of the leaping waves, fired with enthusiasm for the unaccustomed sport, and filled with the excitement of our adventure. The canoes fairly leaped from crest to crest of the billows, and we could not see each other for the screen of dashing spray. A moment or two of active dodging and very hard paddling and we came out breathless at the landing of a temporary station where the international corps of engineers are quartered while the great work of improving the navigation is in progress.

The rocky shoulder of Greben is all scarred and torn by the cuttings which are gradually eating off its rugged and dangerous spur.

Further down stream a

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 northeast, 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 Széchenyi 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 corn-fields, 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 words, IMP. CAESAR DIVI NERVAE F. NERVA TRAIANVS AVG. GERM. PONT. MAXIMUS ****. 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 csárdás. 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

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 AustroHungary or Turkey. The wily Turk makes the most of his position, and drives a thriving trade in all sorts of knickknacks, 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 on it at the Austrian customs. Just beyond this island the Danube bends sharply to the southeast,

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 extends across the river, 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

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 Buda-Pesth 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 Mehadia, or the Herkulesbad, as it is usually called, 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

sixteen feet, and the broad defile at this point is known as the Iron Gates.

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 further inland, and the material of the ancient embankments 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

1

ROUMANIAN PICKET GUARD.

the гОСTHOнHUA HEB JOPK-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 into the comparatively smooth waters below, where we had a moment to look at the landscape from mid-stream, and to vote it tame and uninteresting after the grand scenery of the Kasan Defile. For a mile or two further 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 Turn 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 landingplace 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.