This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1862 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER X. Up the Danube.--The Steamboats and their Accommodation.--Baziasch to Belgrad and Semlin.--Semlin to Mohacs. Or all the rivers of Europe the Danube is the most remarkable, the most important, the most interesting, and the most picturesque. It receives the largest number of tributaries, many of which are little inferior to firstclass rivers. It runs through the broadest plains, and between the loftiest cliffs; it has in some parts the greatest depth, and in others the most troublesome shoals and rocks, and the most serious natural interruptions of any; it is fed by streams proceeding from two of the loftiest of the European mountain chains. Taking its rise more than a thousand miles from the point of its embouchure in the Black Sea, it drains an area of more than half a million of square miles of country, far exceeding, in the length of its course, the number and importance of its tributaries, and the area it drains, any of the rivers of Europe, and even excelling in all these respects that great Asiatic river, the Ganges. With its source less than 3000 feet above the sea, and a length of course more than twice as great as that of the Rhine, it yet pours over the plains a body of water more unmanageable than that of the THE DANUBE. 161 Rhine, whose source lies at an elevation nearly three times as great, and whose waters have so much shorter a distance to travel. Combining so many points of geographical interest, the Danube is no less remarkable in its historical recollections, whether we regard ancient history before the Romans were able to penetrate north of the Alps, or the later period of Roman occupation, or the Mediaeval period, when the Crescent and the Cross were struggling for victory in the lands on its banks. There is...