The International Corps of Engineers, who are carrying out the improvements of navigation on all the rapids of the Carpathian gorge, have begun to cut a canal through the rocks at the Iron Gates along the Servian bank. The work has been in progress since the autumn of 1890, and will be completed in 1893. Trajan’s engineers actually completed part of a similar canal a few rods farther inland, and the material of the ancient enbankments is now employed in the construction of the modern dikes. Like the conscientious travellers we were, we inspected the works, and at the invitation of the engineers, spent a pleasant half-day there. In common with so many other undertakings the world over, the labor is mostly in the hands of the Italians, who look exactly like so many workmen on the Croton Aqueduct. At noon they gathered at the doorway of the ГОСТИОНИЦА НЕВ ЈОРК--GASTHAUS NEWY JORK--quite the same as at the corner groceries of the One-hundred-and-something Street above the Harlem River, and only left the spot during the hour of rest to watch the futile rage of a flock of Servian and Roumanian geese at a sleepy Hungarian eagle chained to a perch--an active symbol of a possible political situation which appealed strongly to the ready Italian wit. We had our usual enemy, a violent head-wind, on the day we trusted our fleet to the mercies of the Pregrada rapids at the Iron Gates, and we had a busy quarter of an hour escaping the whirlpools and avoiding the cross-seas. Unable from our low position to judge of the best channel in the surging waves, we kept as straight a course as the angry and baffling currents would permit, and came out safely in the comparatively smooth waters below, where we had a moment to look at the landscape from mid-stream, and to vote it disappointing after the grand scenery of the Kasan defile. For a mile or two farther on we found we must steer with care, for vicious swirls would suddenly appear and almost snatch the paddles from our hands. Great sturgeon weirs near the Servian shore marked the end of the violent currents, and after passing these we floated tranquilly away down a reach dotted all over with gourds marking the nets and sturgeon lines, which here are set on every side. A pleasant open country was now before us, with hot yellow hills and a town on either hand--Kladovo, with brick fortress and modern earthworks, on the Servian shore, and Turnu Severin high up on a bluff across the river just below. As we had not yet landed in Roumania, we decided to coast along the left bank and see if the landing-place was more interesting than the long straggling modern town which looked so commonplace and unattractive. As we drifted down close to the groups of quaint craft, studying [Illustration: REMAINS OF TRAJAN’S BRIDGE, TURNU SEVERIN]