My delight at the prospect of such a journey was intense. I surrounded myself forthwith with an amazing supply of maps and guide-books, and was busy from morning to night with the thoroughly congenial task of studying and preparing our proposed route. CHAPTER XV. That I started on this occasion even more than on any other with the greatest delight “goes without saying.” A longer and more varied journey than I had ever before enjoyed was before me. All was new, even more entirely new to the imagination than Paris; and my interest, curiosity, and eagerness were great in proportion. We travelled by way of Metz, Strasbourg, and Stuttgardt, and, after reaching the German frontier, by _Lohnkutscher_ or _vetturino_--incredibly slow, but of all modes of travelling save the _haquenée des Cordeliers_ the best for giving the traveller some acquaintance with the country traversed and its inhabitants. A part of the journey was performed in a yet slower fashion, and one which was still richer in its opportunities for seeing both men and things. For we descended the Danube on one of those barges which ply on the river, used mainly for cargo, but also occasionally for passengers. When I look back upon that part of our expedition I feel some astonishment at not only the hardihood of my mother and sister in consenting to such an enterprise, but more still at my own--it really seems to my present notions--almost reckless audacity in counselling and undertaking to protect them in such a scheme. Whether any such boats still continue to navigate the Danube, I do not know. I should think that quicker and better modes of transporting both human beings and goods have long since driven them from their many time secular occupation. In any case it is hardly likely that any English travellers will ever again have such an experience. The _Lohnkutscher_ with his thirty or forty miles a day, and his easy-going lotus-eating-like habitudes is hardly like to tempt the traveller who is wont to grumble at the tediousness of an express train. But a voyage on a Danube carrier barge would be relegated to the category of those things which might be done, “could a man be secure, that his life should endure As of old, for a thousand long years,” but which are quite out of the question in any other circumstances. Here is the account which my mother gives of the boat on which we were about to embark at Ratisbon for the voyage down the river to Vienna.