“A human Hydra issuing from its fen To breathe destruction on its winding way.... The night was dark, and the thick mist allowed Nought to be seen save the artillery’s flame, Which arched the horizon like a fiery cloud, And in the Danube’s waters shone the same-- A mirrored Hell! The volleying roar, and loud Long booming of each peal on peal, o’ercame The ear far more than thunder, for Heaven’s flashes Spare or smite rarely--Man’s make millions ashes!” Now, instead of a thicket of reeds, and every reed a man, the steamer slips along the shrub-grown banks of the island. When ashore, crossing the great plain of the Marchfeld, we find wide-spreading rich agricultural land, with small villages and groups of houses or farm buildings, and occasional factories about the country that but a century ago was the scene of a titanic but inconclusive struggle. Inland from one of the heights--as at Wolkersdorf, from which the poet shows the Austrian Emperor watching the struggle--we may get a view of the whole field with the plateau of Wagram, about which the contest was most severe. The Marchfeld is associated, too, with an even more momentous struggle, for here, in 1278, Rudolph of Habsburg defeated King Ottokar of Bohemia and won the duchy of Austria and the crown of the Empire, so that on this plain may be said to have been founded the fortunes of the Habsburg dynasty, which still rules the Austrian Empire. The greater part of the journey along the river from Vienna until we approach the Hungarian frontier is between green, wooded islands or banks, without any points of special interest after we leave the island of Lobau. The bends of the river make it occasionally appear to the eye as though closed in at either end, so that with its shrub and tree-fringed borders it reminds the traveller of some of the lakes of Eastern Canada. Occasionally we pass along sandy or stony banks and islets, unless the water be very high, with many rooks, daws, and gulls flying about or settling on the exposed ground in search of food. Gulls, it should be said, are common objects of a journey down the Danube. I cannot recall the point at which I first observed them, but certainly before reaching Vienna. The principal places of note before we reach Hungary are on the right bank. Near Petronell--about twenty miles below Vienna--is a massive bit of Roman ruin in the form of an archway, known as the Heidentor, and shortly beyond we reach Deutsch-Altenburg, the ancient Carnuntum of the Romans, celebrated for its sulphur springs, its handsome old church, and its “Hütelberg” or Hat Hill, a mound which is said to have been formed by the inhabitants bringing the earth in hatfuls to raise a simple memorial of the expulsion of the Turks.