the newspapers, that give novelty and spirit to the book.
Clad in flannel from top to toe, rowing in a mahogany boat of a form and style to which the natives were unaccustomed, and braving the rapids of the Danube,—some of them, it strikes us, more con- siderable than the authors make out, but all to a German mind taking the place of the classical Scylla and Charybdis,—it was not wonderful that they excited attention in the smaller towns, or, when the newspaper trumpeting is taken into consideration, that they became lions even of large places. And the excitement did not merely produce incidents, but developed character. This is their reception at Groin.
" A thunderbolt could not have created more excitement than our arrival did in this town : they had heard vague reports, and read extraordinary lies in the newropers for some time previous, about the marvellous expedition of the three Englishmen, who, without guide or pilot, had rowed across the Channel, &c. ttc. ; and now that we had really arrived, they flocked to the hotel to gaze and be satisfied. Our program hitherto had been rather an amusing ovation, but at this place our honours became somewhat a bore. The singing-club turned out and commenced a concert, with a song in com- pliment to us, which, I believe was a German translation of I'm afloat ' : they sung very well ; and if this had been all we should not have been so much to be pitied, but we were hemmed into a corner, bothered with ques- tions, pestered with advice, and implored to go no farrier, on account of the Strudel and Wirbel.' These names, as terrible to tho ear of a dweller on the Danube as Scylla and Charybdis to the sailors of old, designate a rapid and a whirlpool which occur in the river a few miles below Grein. The Strudel, they admitted, was not so dangerous now as it used to be, and we possibly might get over that; but the Wirbel, (the whirlpool,) oh, if we had any regard for our lives, we should go in the steamer or a barge, or carry our boat round, or do anything rather than venture within its terrific vortex ; there was a funnel thirty feet across, which went straight down to nowhere, i and logs of wood thrown n' if they appear again at all, must be looked for somewhere about the Black Sea."
The following is their adventure at Dietfurt ; a place near the hanks of the canal, and too primitive, apparently, even for a news- paper or news.
"The lock-keeper, who had been one of the Bavarian volunteers under sing Otho in Greece, offered to carry our luggage to the best inn in the place, which he told us was a very bad town, inhabited only by old peasants.' It was certainly not a very imposing city, nor was the public to which our guide directed us particularly inviting. However, it was the best in the place ; in which I believe no foreigner ever before set his foot. On the ap- pearance of Boniface, a. fat little man with winking eyes, and a skull-cap on his head, and who combined in his own dignified person the functions of landlord, waiter, cook, chambermaid, and boots, we inquired what we could have to eat? to which he laconically replied, 'Nothing. However, we ul- timately managed to procure some pancakes, bread, cheese, butter' cucum- bers, and milk. Our beds were made up for us in the saal,' which, in these out-of-the-way caravanseries, seems generally to be considered the chamber of honour. In the morning our plump little host paid us a visit in our room, for no ostensible purpose, unless it was to see how we got through the mys- teries of the toilet. We asked him from what part of the world he thought we had come; he said, Nuremberg,—which place he probably considered to be at the extreme limit of the civilized world. We told him that we were from Russia : to which he grinned acquiescence, as he most likely would have done had we told him that we were from Patagonia, or the North Pole. Smith, happening to have a tooth-brush in his hand, showed it to the little man, and asked him if he had ever seen such an instrument before, or knew its use : which soft impeachment he repudiated ; and on learning that it was a newly-invented instrument for coaxing corks out of bottles, he observed, with the air of a connoisseur, 'Behr zweckmassig.' Our bill at this remark- able establishment, for dinners, beds, and breakfasts, amounted in all to the sum of one shilling and fivepence a head."
At Biedenbarg the people had reached the stage of a liberal curiosity.
"We stopped for a short time at Riedenburg ; and Smith went out with the basket to collect provender. At the inn to which he directed his steps, the landlord was very curious to know bow the flannel apparition before him had arrived in those parts. After Smith had, at great expense, explained to him all about it, he said, I suppose you are freighted with coffee and sugar, nicht wahr ?' When Smith left the inn with his booty, he found the streets, which were tolerably lively as he had passed through before, absolutely de- serted ; but when he came to the river the phrenomenon was explained : every individual had poured down to the bank to see the Britisbers' ma- bogany boat; and some of them, with whom we entered into conversation, laughed us to scorn when we said that we were going down the Danube in her. . When we started, a regular scramble took place along the side, like the rush at the boat-races at Oxford. However, we were not long hi tailing them off: but one young lady kept up for such a time that we thought she would like to come with us ; so we stopped and proposed to take her in ; but without effect."
There is a good account of the descent of a rapid, with some few adventures before the rapid was reached, in company with a Ger- man innkeeper, who had volunteered himself without precisely knowing what was before him. The watermen also made a few land-trips. At present, when a good deal of attention has been directed to our Embassy at Vienna, this account of the spiritual department in that place may not be without use in the matter of reform.
"It being Sunday, we went to our Ambassador's chapel; and as this was the first opportunity since we left England that we had had of attending divine service according to our ritual, we looked forward with some pleasure to bearing again the old familiar sound of our beautiful liturgy : but we de- rived but little satisfaction from it, owing to the manner in which the ser- vice was performed. The gentleman who officiated seemed to be so sleepy that he could with difficulty get the words out of his mouth; and then, sud- denly, as if remembering that time was valuable, he would hurry rapidly through a few sentences, and then once more relapse into his former cadence. In fact, we never sat out a service with less edification and derived far more satisfaction from an eloquent sermon that we afterwards heard in the cathe- dral, and of which we understood about one word in ten, than from the dis- course in our own tongue that we bad endeavoured to listen to in the morn- ing." • The trip was a very cheap one ; and so fall of enjoyment to those engaged in it that they recommend it to others. But before any one embarks in such an undertaking, he should ask himself, "have I great temper, plenty of pluck, a capacity for bearing trifling evils, a power of enduring hard work should it come, the constitution to bear bad weather and strange living, as well as the training neces-
sary for confinement to a small boat, and the skill to guide her ? " Without all these qualifications, a man had better avoid a pair-oar on the Danube.
"One of the crew" has contributed pencil illustrations. They are designedly rough, but are full of humour, character, and spirit. They do more than illustrate—they supply. A sketch of the wonderment of the "natives," from the dog and the ox to the human sexagenarian, is especially ludicrous.
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