The actual source of the Danube is by no means agreed upon any more than the source of the Nile. I had a day's exploration of the country, after seeking exact information on this point from the townspeople in vain. The land round Donaueschingen is a spongy soil, with numerous rivulets and a few large streams. I went along one of these, the Brege, which rises twenty miles away, near St. Martin, and investigated about ten miles of another, the Brigach, a brook rising near St. Georgen, about a mile from the source of the Neckar, which river runs to the Rhine. These streams join near Donaueschingen, but in the town there bubbles up a clear spring of water in the gardens of the Prince near the church, and this, the infant Danube, runs into the other water already wide enough for a boat, but which then for the first time has the name of Donau. The name, it is said, is never given to either of the two larger rivulets, because sometimes both have been known to fail in dry summers, while the bubbling spring has been perennial for ages. The Brege and another confluent are caused to fill an artificial pond close by the Brigach. This lake is wooded round, and has a pretty island, and swans, and gold fish. A waterwheel (in vain covered for concealment) pumps up water to flow from an inverted horn amid a group of statuary in this romantic pond, and the stream flowing from it also joins the others, now the Danube.[VII.] [VII.] The old Roman Ister. The name Donau is pronounced "Doanou." Hilpert says, "Dönau allied to Dón and Düna (a river)." In Celtic _Dune_ means "river," and _Don_ means "brown," while "_au_" in German is "island" (like the English "eyot"). The other three rivers mentioned above, and depicted in the plan on the map with this book, seem to preserve traces of their Roman names. Thus the "Brigach" is the stream coming from the north where "Alt Breisach" now represents the Roman "Mons Brisiacus," while the "Brege" may be referred to "Brigantii," the people about the "Brigantinus Lacus," now the "Boden See" (Lake Constance), where also Bregentz now represents the Roman "Brigantius." The river Neckar was "Nicer" of old, and the Black Forest was "Hercynia Silva." The reader being now sufficiently confused about the source of the Danube and its name, let us leave the Latin in the quagmire and jump nimbly into our canoe. That there might be no mistake however in this matter about the various rivulets, I went up each stream until it would not float a canoe. Then from near the little bridge, on August 28, while the singers _sol-faed_ excessively at the boat, and shouted "hocks" and farewells to the English "flagge," and the landlord bowed (his bill of thirteen francs for three full days being duly paid), and the populace stared, the Rob Roy shot off like an arrow on a river delightfully new. CHAPTER IV.