The coming of the steamers meant the passing of the old “ordinari” or mixed passenger and merchandise boats which bygone travellers describe, and we no longer see these cumbersome but picturesque craft with the cabins like floating wooden huts, their many men at the oars, or long oar-steering work, drifting mostly with the stream downwards and being towed upwards--sometimes by a body of men and sometimes by large teams of horses. The men who hired out these horses were known as “Jodelen” and it is said that there would sometimes be as many as thirty or forty horses drawing four or five boats fastened together. These “Jodelen” are described as having had a superstition that some of their number must every year be sacrificed to the Spirit of the Water, and as a consequence when an accident occurred they would all scramble for the drowning man’s hat but never think of “stretching a finger to save him whom they look upon as a doomed and demanded victim.” Less than a hundred years ago a traveller declared that he had seen five “Jodelen” with their horses precipitated into the river, when their companions hastily cut the ropes to prevent the rest of the team from following, and drove on, leaving the poor wretches to their fate. The coming of the steamers must, it may well be believed, have greatly lessened the toll of life taken by the Danube, though when we see the timber rafts floating down with three or four men at either end using their great steering sweeps, and remember some of the places where the swift current “boils” at the various rapids, we cannot help feeling that it must be hazardous work. Once round the bend to the left immediately below the beautiful old city, and with the view of Passau cut off, we naturally look forwards, and find that we are entering newly grand scenery, where both sides of the river are high, rocky and pine-clad. Where the railway bridge crosses the river, we pass, so far as the right bank is concerned, from Bavaria into Austria. The left bank for some time yet continues to be Bavarian.