Danava

“ The shores of the Danube here are extremely beautiful. The valley where it spreads out, is filled with groves, but where the hills approach the stream, its banks are rocky and precipitous, like the Rhine. Although not so picturesque as the latter river, the scenery of the Danube is on a grander scale. On the south side the mountains bend down to it with a majestic sweep, and there must be delightful glances into the valleys that lie between, in passing down the current. ”

“ Far away, where the sky touches the earth in mist, the blue orchards are to be seen. Behind them the spires of the churches of the distant towns stand out in dim fog-like streaks. You are beautiful, Alföld! At least you are beautiful to me. Here I was born and cradled, and here I would have my eyelids closed, and my tomb raised.”
The poet’s wish was not realized, for he fell at the battle of Segesvár (Schassburg) in Transylvania, in 1849, and was buried in an unnamed grave. Of the Alföld which he loved, we get, as has been said, but glimpses passing down the Danube. ”

“ After leaving Vienna, and long before you come to Budapest, the Danube enters a region of singular loneliness and desolation, where its waters spread away on all sides regardless of a main channel, and the country becomes a swamp for miles upon miles, covered by a vast sea of low willow-bushes. ”

“ The town of Mohacs lies on the right bank of the Danube, and has little beyond its battle associations to claim attention. The fact that it is a centre of the Hungarian coal industry and a river-port, gives it its modern importance. Unless we have time and opportunities for journeying inland, there are few places on the long stretch of the river which we are now following that specially invite the traveller to stay. ”

“ From the picturesque point of view, there is something of sameness in the last few hundred miles of Danube scenery—nothing of outstanding beauty or grandeur of scenery is to be looked for below the Iron Gate, though there is an undoubted beauty of its own belonging to a broad river passing through a great and variedly fruitful plain. The chief charm of the lowest part of the journey down the Danube is, however, to be found less in scenery than in the varieties of people to be seen, and the great variation of national costume as the traveller touches at towns in Servia, Rumania, and Bulgaria. ”

“ With her vast territorial extent, including nearly one-seventh part of the terrestrial portion of the globe and one twenty-seventh of its entire surface, and her varied population, comprising nearly one-ninth of the human race, she has spoken as if she could domineer over all Europe; and until the Pruth was passed, and the Danube became once more the theatre of battle, mankind seemed, if not entirely to admit, at least unwilling to dispute the claim. ”

“ The Danube is so fiercely agitated by the stormy wind, that it rises into waves like a sea. We are suffering lamentably from cold; unable to warm ourselves, we stand gazing ruefully at the place where the stove stood—once upon a time.
At four o’clock we reached Drenkova without accident, but completely benumbed: we hurried into the inn built by the steamboat company, where we found capital fare, a warm room, and tolerably comfortable beds. This was the first place we had reached since leaving Pesth at which we could thoroughly warm and refresh ourselves. ”

“ I first came on the Danube at Budapest in the evening after dinner and saw, close in front of me, what looked to be some curious electric-light sign. It seemed odd in war time, and I stared for a moment before I saw that this strange design was really the black, opposite bank with its zigzag streams of lamps.
Few cities have so naturally beautiful a drop-curtain, and, instead of spoiling it with gas-works' and grain-elevators as we should do, the Hungarians have been thoughtful enough to build a tree-covered promenade between the Danube and the string of hotels which line the river. ”

“ The Danubians were Andonites, farmers and herders who had entered Europe through the Balkan peninsula and were moving slowly northward by way of the Danube valley. They made pottery and tilled the land, preferring to live in the valleys. The most northerly settlement of the Danubians was at Liege in Belgium. These tribes deteriorated rapidly as they moved away from the center and source of their culture. The best pottery is the product of the earlier settlements. ”

“ The river is indeed magnificent; with speed, yet with a vastness that renders speed majestic, it hurries on the course assigned to it by the Creator. Never, never had I so much enjoyed the glory of earth. The Danube gives Linz a superiority over a thousand 23scenes otherwise of equal beauty. Standing on the bridge, above is a narrow pass, hedged in by high sombre rocks, and the river sweeps, darkening as it goes, beneath the gloomy shadows of the precipices; below, it flows in a mighty stream through a valley of wide expanse, till you lose sight of it at the base of distant mountains. ”

“ By-and-by, from behind these knolls, the Danube made his appearance; not broader, certainly, than he had seemed to be at Fischamend, or even above it, but evidently deeper, I think, more rapid;—and altogether, with a degree of majesty about him which attaches to the one object, that gives its peculiar character to a living landscape. The Danube is, indeed, a magnificent river; albeit the people who inhabit his banks are only just beginning to find out that he may be turned to more accounts than that of mere beauty.
The interval between Hainburg and Presburg is but a single post ”

“ Duna Szekeso is a calling-place for the Danube steamers, and this afternoon I have the opportunity of taking observations of a gang of Danubian roustabouts at their noontide meal. They are a swarthy, wild-looking crowd, wearing long hair parted in the middle, or not parted at all; to their national costume are added the jaunty trappings affected by river men in all countries. ”

“ The Danube carries fleets of grain and timber ships all summer; they go round by Byzantium."
"The people are well off by your account," said Balbinus.
"They are," Proculus boasted. "It is a cold country, but they will soon be as well-housed as people in Gaul or Britain and they have even a superabundance of clothing and food. Furs are good and cheap, wool and flax plenty. Everybody is well-fed, all the slaves are fat, no one poor anywhere." ”

“ In spring particularly, when the Danube each year overflows its banks, the beauty of the landscape baffles description. It is reminiscent of the tropics, with virgin forests standing in the water, and islands covered with luxuriant growth scattered here and there. It is an ideal country for the sportsman. All kinds of birds, herons, ducks, pelicans, and others, are to be met with, besides wolves and wild cats, and days may be spent in rowing and walking in this Paradise without wearying of it. ”

“ I may admire them but not love them. Nor does my imagination wander down into their valleys. Down in the interior of the vast and ocean-like plains, there I am at home, and that is my world. If I look at the endless plains my thoughts fly far away, and near to the clouds. I see between the Danube and the Tisza the smiling picture of the plains. ”

“ This scattered town, with its broad roads, its tree-grown front, exercises a peculiar fascination over the visitor. It is not particularly beautiful in itself, it has no interest-compelling associations, no buildings of great importance, and yet—it grows on one. It is true that it is beautifully situated near the junction of the river Cerna with the Danube, that the views up towards the Kazán and down to Ada Kaleh, and across the broad swift-running river to the Servian hills, are all fine. ”

“ The Hungarian government also, throughout the latter half of the 19th century, expended vast sums at Budapest for the improvement of navigation and the protection of the town from inundation, and in the regularization of the Danube down to Orsova.
In prehistoric times a great part of the plains of Hungary formed a large inland sea, which ultimately burst its bounds, whereupon the Danube forced its way through the Carpathians at the Kazan defile. Much of what then formed the bottom of this sea consisted until modern times of marshes and waste lands lying in the vicinity of its numerous rivers. ”

“ And men go through the land of this lord, through a city that is clept Cypron, and by the castle of Neasburghe, and by the evil town, that sit toward the end of Hungary. And there pass men the river of Danube. This river of Danube is a full great river, and it goeth into Almayne, under the hills of Lombardy, and it receiveth into him forty other rivers, and it runneth through Hungary and through Greece and through Thrace, and it entereth into the sea, toward the east so rudely and so sharply, that the water of the sea is fresh and holdeth his sweetness twenty mile within the sea. ”

“ Shortly beyond Silistria the Danube leaves Bulgarian territory, after which Rumania is on both sides of the stream, for the land on the right, the Dobrudja, extending from the Danube to the Black Sea, was awarded to Rumania by the Treaty of Berlin. Both sides, too, become flat alike. The river is still greatly diversified by islands covered with bushes and reeds—“more resembling a sea studded with innumerable islets than a river”—while the avi-fauna is particularly rich, immense flocks of wild swans, wild geese, pelicans, herons, and other waterfowl being often seen. ”

“ The Volga, like the Mississippi, is only a national river, while the Danube majestically sweeps through many principalities and kingdoms and empires of Europe and assures easy relations between regions widely separated. And, as the Danube in the past has served as the great natural route for the migrations of nations and the warring hordes of Asia and Europe, so it is now, more than ever before, one of the world’s great highways of commerce and industry, and from present indications the day is not far distant when, economically, it will be the greatest. ”

“ On the opposite side of the river—with which it is connected by an iron bridge of over 550 yards—is Párkány and a little beyond, also on the left side, the river Garam (Gran) flows into the Danube. The river winds considerably during the next few miles, and looking back, the magnificent cathedral that we have just passed shows even more strikingly picturesque than as it is approached down-stream—especially when seen against a gorgeous crimson sunset sky. The hills draw together and the scenery once more becomes variedly beautiful. ”

“ Bridges barring the way down the stream indicate that we are in the neighbourhood of a big city, though the Danube approach to Vienna may well seem disappointing. The grand buildings, the bright streets which we associate with the name must be sought at a distance from the main stream, the buildings along which are mainly wharves and offices connected with the river trade, dominating them being the great warehouses and passenger hall of the Donau Dampfschiffahrts Gesellschaft, whence the fine steamers set out up-stream to Passau and down to Budapest, Belgrade, and the Black Sea. ”

“ In less than five hours the Danube was sighted and crossed, and just as dawn was breaking, the Mohawk came to earth a few miles from the little town of Neusatz. Quickly the aeroplane was metamorphosed into a motor-car and the “tourists” ran into Neusatz, the little Danube town, for breakfast and rest. A few hours later they were across the borders of Galdavia and heading for Langengrad, the old capital surmounted by a frowning fortress built by the Turks in the Middle Ages. ”

“ From the Magyar The scenery of the Danube as we reach the Hungarian frontier has taken on a new beauty, for there is, as it were, a natural boundary to the ancient kingdom where a spur of the Little Carpathians comes down to the left bank of the river, while a lower range of hills on the right marks off the Vienna valley that we have left from the far larger one on which we soon enter. ”

“ The gipsies (zigeuner) have given their name to the lofty hill, the Zigeunersberg by the Danube side, on which are the ruins of the castle of Hungary’s chief national hero, John Hunyadi (whose name in its Hungarian form, Hunyadi Janos, is familiar all the world over as that of a medicinal mineral water!) . The hill should be climbed for the view it affords far over the Danubian plain; of the broad flowing Danube, where it is joined by the seemingly greater Save; of the valleys of these two rivers; and of the towns and roofs of the “White City” of Servia—Belgrade. ”

“ 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 cottages 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. ”

“ Happy to slip beyond the control of stern banks, the Danube here wanders about at will among the intricate network of channels intersecting the islands everywhere with broad avenues down which the waters pour with a shouting sound; making whirlpools, eddies, and foaming rapids; tearing at the sandy banks; carrying away masses of shore and willow-clumps; and forming new islands innumerable which shift daily in size and shape and possess at best an impermanent life, since the flood-time obliterates their very existence. ”