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within sight. The sense of remoteness from the world of human kind, the
utter isolation, the fascination of this singular world of willows,
winds, and waters, instantly laid its spell upon us both, so that we
allowed laughingly to one another that we ought by rights to have held
some special kind of passport to admit us, and that we had, somewhat
audaciously, come without asking leave into a separate little kingdom of
wonder and magic--a kingdom that was reserved for the use of others who
had a right to it, with everywhere unwritten warnings to trespassers for
those who had the imagination to discover them.

Though still early in the afternoon, the ceaseless buffetings of a most
tempestuous wind made us feel weary, and we at once began casting about
for a suitable camping-ground for the night. But the bewildering
character of the islands made landing difficult; the swirling flood
carried us in-shore and then swept us out again; the willow branches
tore our hands as we seized them to stop the canoe, and we pulled many a
yard of sandy bank into the water before at length we shot with a great
sideways blow from the wind into a backwater and managed to beach the
bows in a cloud of spray. Then we lay panting and laughing after our
exertions on hot yellow sand, sheltered from the wind, and in the full
blaze of a scorching sun, a cloudless blue sky above, and an immense
army of dancing, shouting willow bushes, closing in from all sides,
shining with spray and clapping their thousand little hands as though to
applaud the success of our efforts.

"What a river!" I said to my companion, thinking of all the way we had
traveled from the source in the Black Forest, and how we had often been
obliged to wade and push in the upper shallows at the beginning of June.

"Won't stand much nonsense now, will it?" he said, pulling the canoe a
little farther into safety up the sand, and then composing himself for a
nap.

I lay by his side, happy and peaceful in the bath of the
elements--water, wind, sand, and the great fire of the sun--thinking of
the long journey that lay behind us, and of the great stretch before us
to the Black Sea, and how lucky I was to have such a delightful and
charming traveling companion as my friend, the Swede.

We had made many similar journeys together, but the Danube, more than
any other river I knew, impressed us from the very beginning with its
_aliveness_. From its tiny bubbling entry into the world amon