Читать книгу The Danube from the Black Forest to the Black Sea онлайн

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We were eager to be afloat once more, so we picked up a scratch breakfast and launched the canoes while the ring of the scythe was still in the air, and the busy spreaders had not yet begun their work.

Wernwag.

We shot three weirs in as many hours, and passed Neudingen, Mühlheim, and Friedingen before eleven o’clock. At the last-named village, a sweetly pastoral place among the hills, we encountered our first rapids, for the flood was so high that all the shallows in the river above had been quite covered, and we had seen white water at the weirs alone. The channel narrows at this point, the hills crowd close to the banks, and great gray crags rise from the dark foliage on the steep slopes. Ruins of castles crown almost every prominent summit, and the scenery grows wilder and more beautiful at every bend of the river. Kallenberg, Wildenstein, Wernwag, Falkenstein, and a half-score of other ruins, equally wonderful in situation, tempted us to sketch them, and we found the most delightful spots imaginable wherever we paused and exchanged the paddle for the pencil.