green swells like the sea, too, until the
branches turn and lift, and then silvery white as their under-side turns
to the sun.

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.

Properly speaking, this fascinating part of the river's life begins soon
after leaving Pressburg, and we, in our Canadian canoe, with gipsy tent
and frying-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 had slipped swiftly through still-sleeping Vienna, leaving
it a couple of hours later a mere patch of smoke against the blue hills
of the Wienerwald on the horizon; we had breakfasted below Fischeramend
under a grove of birch trees roaring in the wind; and had then swept on
the tearing current past Orth, Hainburg, Petronell (the old Roman
Carnuntum of Marcus Aurelius), and so under the frowning heights of
Theben on a spur of the Carpathians, where the March steals in quietly
from the left and the frontier is crossed between Austria and Hungary.

Racing along at twelve kilometers an hour soon took us well into
Hungary, and the muddy waters--sure sign of flood--sent us aground on
many a shingle-bed, and twisted us like a cork in many a sudden belching
whirlpool before the towers of Pressburg (Hungarian, Poszony) showed
against the sky; and then the canoe, leaping like a spirited horse, flew
at top speed under the gray walls, negotiated safely the sunken chain of
the Fliegende Bruecke ferry, turned the corner sharply to the left, and
plunged on yellow foam into the wilderness of islands, sand-banks, and
swamp-land beyond--the land of the willows.

The change came suddenly, as when a series of bioscope pictures snaps
down on the streets of a town and shifts without warning into the
scenery of lake and forest. We entered the land of desolation on wings,
and in less than half an hour there was neither boat nor fishing-hut nor
red roof, nor any single sign of human habitation and civilizatio