Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1897 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XIII A trip down the Danube--Scene on board the steamer--Fromontor and the cave-dwellers--Turkish, Bulgarian, and Servian ladies-- Vingt-et-un on deck--Montenegrins--The breaking up of the ice-- The Gibraltar of Europe--Semlin--The first cataract--The Castle of the Nine Towers--St. George's Cave and the furin infernalis--Eoman ruins--A moral shower-bath--The Iron-Gate Pass--Eoumanian officials--Beggars--Water mills and buoys on the Danube--Turnu Severin--Orsova and Trajan's Column--Is it a Bevolution?-- Market-day--Costumes--A Boumanian village--Fairy-land. One of the most delightful episodes of the delightful six months spent that year in Budapest was a trip down the Danube to Orsova. It was a fine spring morning of the balmiest description when I -stepped aboard one of the express steamers belonging to the Danube Steam Navigation Company, and set off, under the shadow of the rocky Gellerthegy, towering up to a height of 300 feet above the river. The decks were crowded with passengers--fair-haired Germans, swarthy Bosnians, peach-complexioned Magyars, haughty Austrians, graceful Dalmatians, silent, white-veiled, or red-fezed Turks, and Boumanians of every degree, from the tall, effeminate-looking dweller in Bucharest to the sallow, uncivilised shepherd from the Wallachian Mountains. There were also Jews of various nationalities, some quite clean and spruce in appearance, others disgustingly the reverse; and of course the ubiquitous gipsy was present. The first-class accommodation is excellent and most reasonable in price; the second class consists merely of permission to lie, or squat, on the bare deck of the 'fo'cas'le, ' and is patronised only by the army of the 'great unwashed, ' who usually outnumber the first-class.