“We start to-morrow, and I can hardly tell you whether I dread it or wish for it most. We have been down to the river’s bank to see the boat, and it certainly does not look very promising of comfort. But there is nothing better to be had. It is a large structure of unpainted deal boards, almost the whole of which is occupied by a sort of ark-like cabin erected in the middle. This is very nearly filled by boxes, casks, and bales; the small portion not so occupied being provided with planks for benches, and a species of rough dresser placed between them for a table. This we are given to understand is fitted up for the express accommodation of the cabin passengers.” In point of fact, we had, as I remember, no fellow passengers in any part of our voyage. I take it that nobody, save perhaps the peasants of the villages on the banks of the stream, for short passages from one of them to the other, ever thought of travelling by these barges even in those days. They were in fact merely transports for merchandise of the heavier and rougher sort. The extreme rudeness of their construction, merely rough planks roughly nailed together, is explained by the fact that they are not intended ever to make the return voyage against the stream, but on arriving at Vienna are knocked to pieces and sold for boarding. “But the worst thing I saw,” continues my mother, “is the ladder which, in case of rain, is to take us down to this place of little ease. It consists of a plank with sticks nailed across it to sustain the toes of the crawler who would wish to avoid jumping down seven or eight feet. The sloping roof of the ark is furnished with one bench of about six feet long, from which the legs of the brave souls who sit on it dangle down over the river. There is not the slightest protection whatever at the edge of this abruptly sloping roof, which forms the only deck; and nothing but the rough unslippery surface of the deal planks, of which it is formed, with the occasional aid of a bit of stick about three inches long nailed here and there, can prevent those who stand or walk upon it from gently sliding down into the stream.... Well! we have _determined_, one and all of us, to navigate the Danube between Ratisbon and Vienna; and I will neither disappoint myself nor my party from the fear of a fit of vertigo, or a scramble down a ladder.” But if the courage of the ladies did not fail them, mine, as that of the person most responsible for the adventure, did! And I find that, on the day following that on which the last extract was written, my mother writes: