Just below Deggendorf, comes in on the right another of those sixty navigable tributaries which, as Gibbon pointed out, go to swell the volume of the mighty river. This is the Isar, the river on which, some eighty miles away, stands Munich. Across the level land about the Isar’s many mouths may be seen the spires of the old market town of Plattling--the last town upon that river. It is inevitable, when mentioning the Isar, that one should think of Campbell’s “Hohenlinden,” with its opening verse-- “On Linden when the sun was low, All bloodless lay the untrodden snow, And dark as winter was the flow Of Iser, rolling rapidly.” It has not much to do with the Danube, perhaps, but it may be pointed out here that Hohenlinden is about twenty miles as the crow flies from the nearest point on the Isar, and that the river nearest the battlefield is the Isen. Either Campbell misspelt the name of the river and was a little “out” in his geography, or else his printers made Isen into Iser--and since then the misprint has been generally adopted. The poet’s sojourn in Bavaria in the year 1800, was indeed fruitful of several verses besides the famous “Hohenlinden,” which was written after his return to London, while three years earlier he had written “The Wounded Hussar” a piece of mechanical romanticism which was at one time widely popular-- “Alone to the banks of the dark rolling Danube Fair Adelaide hied when the battle was o’er: ‘Oh, whither,’ she cried, ‘hast thou wandered, my lover? Or here dost thou welter and bleed on the shore?’” Where the Isar joins the Danube we may more fittingly recall the poet’s “Song translated from the German.” “Sweet Iser! were the sunny realm And flowery gardens mine, Thy waters I would shade with elm To prop the tender vine; My golden flagons I would fill With rosy draughts from every hill; And under every myrtle bower My gay companions should prolong The laugh, the revel, and the song, To many an idle hour. Like rivers crimsoned with the beam Of yonder planet bright Our balmy cups should ever stream Profusion of delight; No care should touch the mellow heart, And sad or sober none depart; For wine can triumph over woe, And love and Bacchus brother powers Could build in Iser’s sunny bowers A paradise below.”