The canons of the place he thus founded bore the word “allain” on their
arms, their clothes and their houses, and this, says Schultes, was
latinized as “Solus cum sola.” Beyond Vilshofen and on to Passau is
a lovely stretch of the river, with wooded hills on either side and
occasional villages. The swift stream, here broken up by submerged
rocks, “boils” and foams along in a manner that is seen again and again
on the journey. At points where the disturbance is more particularly
marked the hurrying waters receive some special name, until they
reach the most remarkable manifestation of their brokenness at the
world-famous Iron Gate. Below Vilshofen, near the village of Sandbach
the troubled waters are known as “the terrible Sandbach”; but as we
see boats passing these places--among them being ferry boats taken by
girls across the swirling waters--the terror is more in seeming than in
reality, when experience and care are employed in navigation. Indeed
the temerarious Englishmen who took out the “Water Lily” said that
they found nothing dreadful, nothing their shallow craft could not
negotiate with ordinary care. As their chronicler wrote of this stretch
of the river, which had been described to them as one of the bugbears
of the Danube: “On we went alone, and found that it was just what we
had expected, a most exceedingly dangerous place for a heavily laden
boat, but by no means so for our little cockle-shell, that only drew a
few inches of water; rocks were scattered about the bed of the river in
every direction, some above water, and some below; the white breakers
surrounded us on every side; we came rather unpleasantly near one, but
with steady pulling, careful steering, and quick obedience to the word
of command, we came safely through.”
Some way beyond “the terrible Sandbach” the road was cut more or less
through the very rock right along the river-side, and here is to be
seen another of the Danube memorials in the form of a couchant lion
on a pedestal placed upon a jutting rock above an inscription which
records that the road was made by order of Maximilian Joseph, the first
king of Bavaria. From near Heining--where a branch of the railway is
carried across the Danube, to the valley of the Ilz and the villages
of the Wald--the towers of Mariahilf by Passau may be seen, and soon
after the towers of Passau itself and the buildings on the high hills
on the left bank to the north of the town.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] A similar story belongs to Kent, for it is said that the devil,
wishing to destroy the city of Canterbury, took a great part of it up
intending to drop it in the sea, but just as he reached the shore, he
heard the ringing of the cathedral bell, and had to drop his load, and
so instead of destroying the city of Canterbury, he started the town of
Whitstable.
II
THE AUSTRIAN DANUBE
CHAPTER IV
PASSAU TO LINZ
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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