Austria -- Description and travel; Hungary -- Description and travel
The unfortunate tailor attempted to throw a dead goat over a
precipice, but lost his balance and fell himself instead. His
mangled body, smashed up by the razor-edged rocks, was washed
down the stream. The country folk asserted that the goat was
no animal at all but the fiend himself playing the part of a
dead goat to tempt the tailor to his doom. To confirm this
it appeared that several of them had seen the goat leaping
up the precipices alive after the catastrophe. The bishop’s
chaplain thereupon sprinkled holy water over the precipice.
Now it happened that the tailor had been doing some work for
the bishop, and after his death it was discovered that he had
stolen at least a third of the glorious brocade which had been
given him to make the robe. Now, of course, the judgment which
had fallen on him was explained, for it was his impious theft
which had given the evil one this power over him. The offerings
of the pious to the bishop that year were doubled!
Englehardzell is the Austrian frontier house, for the real boundary
of the countries, otherwise than in the Danube, is marked by a small
stream a little below the Jochenstein.
Abrupt and steep, from either shore
The pine-clad precipices soar;
While oft, emerging from the wood,
In foam descends the mountain-flood.
At one point the river is contracted to half its usual width and
accordingly rushes onward with greater velocity than before; the hills
rise in varying heights from 600 to 1000 feet, and the turnings and
windings of the river are so complicated that one moment the steamer
heads north and some time later south, boxing the compass in her
ordinary course.
After the castle of Neuhaus, the original home of the Counts of
Schaumberg, the channel opens out and shows an entirely different
character, with numerous wooded islets and a more peaceful style of
beauty. We soon run past Mt. Calvary, the favourite pleasure-ground
of the people of the clean, prosperous, modern-looking town of Linz,
connected with an iron lattice bridge with the sister city of Urfahr.
Linz, however, is not by any means really modern, whatever its looks,
as its annals include the fact of its destruction by the Huns! It is
the chief town of Upper Austria, and was made a centre of occupation
by Napoleon in his octopus-like attempt to draw all Europe beneath
his sway. The great features of the neighbourhood are the hill of
Pöstlingberg, which can be reached by tram, and the massive castle
overlooking the Danube. It is interesting now in connection with the
observation cars put on to the Innsbruck-Salzburg-Linz-Vienna line as
an experiment in 1912.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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