been forgotten in the struggle with the violent squalls and at the prospect of a night on the water, and as we hauled the canoes up on the firm stone-work of the dike and explored the snail-infested morass behind it, we accepted the unæsthetic situation on the well-drained platform, and were even grateful to the engineers who had spoiled the river for sketching, but had improved it, at this point at least, for camping purposes. In the alder swamp behind our camp a great gushing spring of clean Danube water, filtering through the dike, abundantly supplied this the most desirable luxury of a bivouac. There is more than one compensation, we thought, for this annoying desecration of the river scenery. [Illustration: LUMBER RAFT] With the brilliant sunshine and drying air of the next morning returned the eager anticipations of the day before. The river was full of life. Great flat-boats and rafts, old friends from the river Traun, drifted past us as we prepared to start. The raftsmen laboring at the great sweeps gave us the morning greetings with a true ring of hearty and honest good-will, and shouted “Auf baldiges Wiedersehen” as they swung along down the reach. We had long since learned that the old adage that the race is not always to the swift might be as well illustrated by the active canoe and the cumbersome raft as by the hare and the tortoise, and we knew that while we were giving our boats their morning toilet the rafts would be surging along at the rate of three or four miles an hour, and would reach their destination near Vienna long before we should.