Then we
lay panting and laughing after our exertions on the hot yellow sand,
sheltered from the wind, and in the full blaze of a scorching sun, a
cloudless blue sky above, and an immense army of dancing, shouting willow
bushes, closing in from all sides, shining with spray and clapping their
thousand little hands as though to applaud the success of our efforts.
"What a river!" I said to my companion, thinking of all the way we had
traveled from the source in the Black Forest, and how he had often been
obliged to wade and push in the upper shallows at the beginning of June.
"Won't stand much nonsense now, will it?" he said, pulling the canoe a
little farther into safety up the sand, and then composing himself for a
nap.
I lay by his side, happy and peaceful in the bath of the elements--water,
wind, sand, and the great fire of the sun--thinking of the long journey
that lay behind us, and of the great stretch before us to the Black Sea,
and how lucky I was to have such a delightful and charming traveling
companion as my friend, the Swede.
We had made many similar journeys together, but the Danube, more than any
other river I knew, impressed us from the very beginning with its
aliveness. From its tiny bubbling entry into the world among the pinewood
gardens of Donaueschingen, until this moment when it began to play the
great river-game of losing itself among the deserted swamps, unobserved,
unrestrained, it had seemed to us like following the grown of some living
creature.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25