Vienna offers an unsightly water-front to the Danube navigator. A succession of huge passenger and railway bridges span the river, and but for the constant busy traffic seen upon them would appear unnecessarily numerous in full proportion to their ugliness. At one end they touch the marshy, desolate shores of the great plain of the Marschfeld, which stretches away to Hainburg and Theben at the Hungarian frontier, and at the other their solid piers and embankments either stand isolated on waste ground, or are supported by ragged and scattered settlements along the bank, with here and there a huge manufactory. From the level of the water a broad veil of smoke rising above the trees is the only visible indication of the proximity of the great city, except it be the bridges themselves and the numerous tow-boats and excursion steamers. The city lies in a semicircular valley between the hills of the Wienerwald and the Danube on both sides of the little river Wien, which drains the hills to the west and empties its muddy flood into the Danube three or four miles below the city. The northern angle of this little stream, in the very heart of Vienna, is connected by a canal with the Danube at some distance above the town, and the Wien has been canalized and enlarged from its junction with the canal to its mouth, so that there is a practicable waterway through the town. The large Danube passenger boats cannot enter the canal, however, but are waited upon by small steamers which connect with them at the mouth of the Wien. The great park, the Prater, where the International Exhibition of 1873 was held, and a broad flat of rough land adjoining, separate the city from the broad Danube, which, with wonderfully rapid current, rushes off to the east towards the distant hills which mark the Hungarian frontier. [Illustration: A LITTLE GIRL OF HAINBURG]