The green meadow under Golubáç invited us to a pleasant camp, for night was fast coming on as we finished our sketching, and we were loath to leave the charming, romantic spot. But one of our party, unable to resist the impulse to penetrate the gathering gloom of the defile, had drifted on and was lost to sight. The whole sky was tinged with the coppery red of sunset when we set out to overtake him. The river whirled and rushed and wrestled with our paddles as we floated on into the deepening twilight. Now and then a great boiling under our very keels would throw us out of our course, and make the light canoes bound along with an unfamiliar and disturbing motion. On and on we went, unable longer to see a map, and with no means of determining where and when we should come upon the dangerous rapids and whirlpools that lay somewhere in our path. Frequent camp-fires sparkled at the water’s edge, and from one to another we paddled, waking the echoes with the shrill notes of our whistles, until at last, just as we had concluded to give up the search, certain that we had passed our companion in the darkness, we heard his welcome hail, and were soon in camp. The plaintive song of a peasant girl, spinning from a distaff as she walked through the rustling maize-field behind our camp, brought us to our feet long before we had slept off the effects of our sixty miles’ paddle of the day before; and, eager to be at the rapids, we ate a hasty breakfast and were off down the reach, very like the Hudson in scenery, to the little coaling station of Drenkova, where we had been told to take a pilot. We trimmed our canoes with unusual care, tested our paddles, stowed away all loose articles, and put everything in fighting trim. Although we did not propose to undergo the humiliation of following a pilot through the rapids, we thought it best to take all reasonable means to find the best channel, and we therefore landed at Drenkova, and consulted the agent of the steamship company there. He could give us but very few directions which were of any use, but offered us a pilot, and advised us strongly not to attempt the passage alone. But the sight of puffing steamers slowly dragging loaded barges up the stream was to our minds satisfactory proof of the nature of the obstructions, and, a little impatient at the delay, we pushed off, followed by repeated cautions and confused directions. From our long experience with the Danube, we had come to believe that it was a thoroughly well-behaved and well-regulated river, whose mild tricks were easily understood, and whose current would not endanger the veriest tub that ever disgraced a navigable stream. We were only too anxious, then, to see what the river could really do in the way of making navigation difficult and dangerous; and, besides, never having tested our canoes except in the choppy seas of the sudden wind-storms, we were ready to risk a good deal to find out how they would act in the baffling currents