(1907)
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After leaving Vienna, and long before you come to Budapest, the Danube enters aregion of singular loneliness and desolation, where its waters spread away onall sides regardless of a main channel, and the country becomes a swamp formiles upon miles, covered by a vast sea of low willow-bushes. On the big mapsthis deserted area is painted in a fluffy blue, growing fainter in color as itleaves the banks, and across it may be seen in large straggling letters theword Sümpfe, meaning marshes.
In high flood this great acreage of sand, shingle-beds, and willow-grownislands is almost topped by the water, but in normal seasons the bushes bendand rustle in the free winds, showing their silver leaves to the sunshine in anever-moving plain of bewildering beauty. These willows never attain to thedignity of trees; they have no rigid trunks; they remain humble bushes, withrounded tops and soft outline, swaying on slender stems that answer to theleast pressure of the wind; supple as grasses, and so continually shifting thatthey somehow give the impression that the entire plain is moving and alive. Forthe wind sends waves rising and falling over the whole surface, waves of leavesinstead of waves of water, green swells like the sea, too, until the branchesturn and lift, and then silvery white as their underside turns to the sun.
Happy to slip beyond the control of the stern banks, the Danube here wandersabout at will among the intricate network of channels intersecting the islandseverywhere 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 islandsinnumerably which shift daily in size and shape and possess at best animpermanent life, since the flood-time obliterates their very existence.
Properly speaking, this fascinating part of the river’s life begins soonafter leaving Pressburg, and we, in our Canadian canoe, with gipsy tent andfrying-pan on board, reached it on the crest of a rising flood about mid-July.That very same morning, when the sky was reddening before sunrise, we hadslipped swiftly through still-sleeping Vienna, leaving it a couple of hourslater a mere patch of smoke against the blue hills of the Wienerwald on thehorizon; we had breakfasted below Fischeramend under a grove of birch treesroaring in the wind; and had then swept on the tearing current past Orth,Hainburg, Petronell (the old Roman Carnuntum of Marcus Aurelius), and so underthe frowning heights of Thelsen on a spur of the Carpathians, where the Marchsteals in quietly from the left and the frontier is crossed between Austria andHungary.
Racing along at twelve kilometers an hour soon took us well into Hungary, andthe muddy waters—sure sign of flood—sent us aground on many ashingle-bed, and twisted us like a cork in many a sudden belching whirlpoolbefore the towers of Pressburg (Hungarian, Pozsóny) showed against the sky; andthen the canoe, leaping like a spirited horse, flew at top speed under the greywalls, negotiated safely the sunken chain of the Fliegende Brucke ferry, turnedthe corner sharply to the left, and plunged on yellow foam into the wild