We did not attempt to enter the Danube canal with our canoes, but paddled down to the boat-house of the Lia Ruder Verein near the third great bridge over the main stream. Here we found a delegation of the club to welcome us, for our probable arrival had been announced to them, and the whole establishment was put at once at our disposal. Our canoes found shelter and healing varnish for their wounds and were stored in the company of forty-eight racing boats, from the eight-oar to the single-scull, while we were carried off bodily by the members of the club and comfortably installed in a hotel. The inexhaustible hospitality and cheery companionship of the members of the Lia Ruder Verein would never tire our muse were we to start the song agoing. This hospitality, not only general, but particular and special, so gilded our stay in the city that the bitterness of parting from Danube and canoes gave but a flavor to the joys of congenial society. One perfect summer morning we saw the last of the club-house as we shot the railway bridge and cast a hasty glance past the bellying mizzen of the bounding canoe. No less absorbing feeling than the glorious sense of freedom and irresponsibility as we found ourselves again on the river would have excused to our consciences the joy we felt at leaving Vienna. But the memory of its kindness and courtesy has survived all ephemeral sentiments. [Illustration: A HUNGARIAN FERRY] After a short half-day’s paddle down a tossing current, past scores of floating mills and along miles of stone embankments, we came to the point where the hills again close in from both sides and form a wall along the eastern horizon. Though less imposing than some other mountain ranges we had passed, and, indeed, very narrow where it touches the river, this is the barrier where for many centuries constant and successful resistance was kept up against the advance of the Mahometans. Here for a long time was the extreme eastern bulwark of Christendom, the advance outposts of the West; and here, after countless campaigns, the hereditary enemy suffered the crushing defeats which, a little over a century and a half ago, marked the beginning of the decline of his power in Europe. This gateway to the great Carpathian plain, and the political as well as geographical frontier of Hungary, is as perfect a natural rampart as could be imagined. At the very river’s edge rise, on either bank, high isolated hills, covered now with masses of ruins, but formerly part of a complete system of fortifications perfectly commanding the river from both sides. These fortifications enclosed, as the ruins now plainly show, the little town of Hainburg, on the right bank, and Theben, a few miles below on the other side of the river, the highest Danube town in the Hungarian kingdom. [Illustration: THE WIENERTHOR, HAINBURG]