Those words were written more than half a century ago. The beetling cliffs, the grand rugged rock faces, and steep tree-grown slopes and rushing waters remain. The fisherman and goats are yet to be seen, but I looked in vain, both journeying down and up the river, for the soaring eagle, feeling sure that it must be æried in these magnificent heights at the base of which the steamer bears us. Grand and lonely as it is, though villages and hamlets are passed at no infrequent intervals, more especially on the Hungarian side, it no longer suggests “primæval wilderness”--far less so, indeed, than some of the low-lying stretches between Budapest and Zimony (Semlin). Passing between these rocky walls the river has narrowed considerably, and the swift current hastens to the cataracts and rapids which have been considerably modified by the gigantic engineering undertaking of improving the channel for shipping. Where, ahead of us on the right, rises an abrupt face of tawny rock, the river suddenly widens into a lake-like form. This great rock, the Greben, over six hundred feet in height, was partly blasted away for the purposes of navigation. On its face were marks of the old Roman road, of which we shall see something later. Here we are in the rapids, the water foaming and breaking over submerged rock on all sides of us, the steamer’s course being marked by occasional floating moored tree trunks. Just beyond the Greben, where we get an almost dramatic change from the narrowed course of the river between the wooded rocky heights to a broad lake-like expanse, we reach what is known as the Little Iron Gate, where the current flows over a series of ridges of rock, giving to the surface a “boiling” character. The hills have somewhat receded here, and on the right bank is seen the small old Servian town of Milanovac, and on the left bank the small village of Svinica, with immediately beyond, a group of ruins on a rocky knoll close above the water. These are three towers, known as the Drey Kule and said to be the remains of a Roman castle. The old builders of the stronghold were probably guided in their choice of a site by requiring a vantage point overlooking the river, but the building must also have afforded magnificent views of the broad, troubled waters and of the grand surrounding mountains. The lake-like effect of this stretch of the river is increased by the fact that shortly after passing the Drey Kule the Danube sweeps round in a northerly direction as it approaches the magnificent gorge or defile of the Kazán--the grandest part of the whole course of the river.