The problem--if problem it can be called--is an old one, for a traveller more than half a century ago amusingly prefaced his account of a voyage down this part of the river in the following fashion. He describes how, having embarked at Orsova, he “proceeded to encounter the perils of the Eisern Thor--the Iron Gate of the Danube--which is so apt to be associated in the stranger’s imagination with something of real personal risk and adventure. The ‘Iron Gate,’ we conjecture, is some narrow, dark, and gloomy defile, through which the water, hemmed in by stupendous cliffs, and ‘iron-bound,’ as we say, foams and billows, and dashes over a channel of rocks, every one of which, when it cannot drag you into its own whirlpool, is sure to drive you upon some of its neighbours, which, with another rude shove, that makes your bark stagger and reel, sends you smack upon a third! ‘But the “gate”?’ ‘Why the gate is nothing more or less than other gates, the “outlet”; and I dare say we shall be very glad when we are “let out quietly.”’ ‘Very narrow at that point, ’spose?’ ‘Very. You have seen an iron gate?’ ‘To be sure I have.’ ‘Well, I’m glad of that because you can more readily imagine what the “Iron Gate” of the Danube is.’ ‘Yes--and I’m all impatience to see it; but what if it should be locked when we arrive?’ ‘Why, in that case we should feel a little awkward.’ ‘Should we have to wait long?’ ‘Only till we got the key, although we might have to send to Constantinople for it.’ ‘Constantinople! well, here’s a pretty situation! I wish I had gone by the “cart.”’ ‘You, certainly had your choice, and might have done so--the company provide both waggon and water conveyance to Gladova; but I daresay we shall find the gate open.’ ‘I hope we shall; and as for the rocks and all that, why we got over the Wirbel and Strudel and Izlas and twenty others, and ’spose we get over this, too. It’s only the Gate that puzzles me--the Handbook says not a word about that--quite unpardonable such an omission! Write to the publisher----’!” This is of course, a somewhat exaggerated account, but the name of the Iron Gate is likely long to cause confusion in the minds of “visualizing” persons--those who cannot learn the name of an object without forming a picture of the thing named. Such folk, as long as the Iron Gate remains the Iron Gate, will be likely to think of it as a gloomy defile rather than as a fairly wide portion of the river--will associate the name with the confining banks rather than with the rocks in the bed of the river--rocks which during high water are entirely hidden from sight. The great engineering work which has been carried out in regulating the navigation of the Danube, has modified the terror of the Iron Gate so that the long ridges of serrated rock are less of a menace than of old.