The meadows were full of haymakers--men, women, and children--laughing and chattering and bidding us “Grüss Gott!” as we passed. The odors of the fresh hay and the perfumes of the flowers were almost intoxicating in their strength. Nature on every side of us had that peculiar freshness and depth of color which comes with the first clear weather at the end of a long-continued rain, and the [Illustration: THE START--DONAUESCHINGEN] landscape, seen from the level of the water, had the increased beauty of line and composition which so often comes from this point of view in the perspective. In less than an hour we reached our first weir near the little village of Neidingen, but the banks were easily accessible owing to the height of the stream, and in five minutes we had dragged the canoes across a grassy point and had launched them again. From the accounts we had read of these obstructions to navigation of the upper river, we anticipated much greater difficulties than we encountered at any of the one-and-twenty weirs and dams we navigated between Donaueschingen and Ulm, although the first one of all was by far the easiest to pass, and should not be mentioned as a fair sample. The weirs are far more numerous than the dams; indeed, there are but two or three of the latter. These, of course, must be carried over because of the sheer descent of the construction, whereas the weirs usually consist of a long slope of masonry over which the canoes can be shot without difficulty at the end of a long painter.