Below Rustzuk and Giurgevo, the Danube widens yet again, until it is about three miles from bank to bank, though the far-stretching surface of the water is still diversified with many willow-grown islands, and at times with exposed sandbanks. The shores (in early summer) “present a never ending succession of pasture lands, so rich, so verdant, so luxuriant, that one might almost fancy they were the reality of the Indian’s dream of Paradise, where the green hunting fields have no end.” Tutrakan, a small, picturesquely situated town on the Bulgarian bank, and Oltenitza (whence a railway runs to Bukarest), on the low Rumanian shore, are the next stopping places, after which the river finds its way through a veritable network of islands and marshy tracts abounding in many species of waterfowl, and “greatly beloved by sportsmen in search of game.” It was probably hereabouts that, during the latter part of the fourth century, the great migration of Goths crossed the Danube into the Roman province of Lower Mœsia. The Goths, pressed southwards by the harrying Huns, “an unknown and monstrous race of savages,” had appealed to the Emperor Valens and were allowed, under the harshest conditions, to put the great river between themselves and their powerful enemies. Gibbon, in the course of a very full account of the movement, says: “the prayers of the Goths were granted, and their service was accepted by the imperial court; and orders were immediately despatched to the civil and military governors of the Thracian diocese, to make the necessary preparations for the passage and subsistence of a great people, till a proper and sufficient territory could be allotted for their future residence. The liberality of the Emperor was accompanied, however, with two harsh and rigorous conditions, which prudence might justify on the side of the Romans; but which distress alone could extort from the indignant Goths. Before they passed the Danube, they were required to deliver their arms; and it was insisted that their children should be taken from them, and dispersed through the provinces of Asia, where they might be civilized by the arts of education, and serve as hostages to secure the fidelity of their parents.... The imperial mandate was at length received for transporting over the Danube, the whole body of the Gothic nation; but the execution of this order was a task of labour and difficulty. The stream of the Danube, which in those parts is above a mile broad, had been swelled by incessant rains; and in this tumultuous passage, many were swept away and drowned, by the rapid violence of the current. A large fleet of vessels, of boats, and of canoes, was provided: many days and nights they passed and repassed with indefatigable toil, and the most strenuous diligence was exerted by the officers of Valens, that not a single barbarian, of those who were reserved to subvert the foundations of Rome, should be left on the opposite shore.”