announced the perilous proximity. Numerous reefs of rocks here
traverse the stream, and the current runs eddying among them.

We passed this dangerous place in about fifteen minutes. Here, at
the Iron Gate, the high tide befriended us, as it did at the former
falls.

I found these falls, and indeed almost every thing we passed, far
below the anticipations I had formed from reading descriptions,
frequently of great poetic beauty. I wish to represent every thing
as I found it, as it appeared before my eyes; without adornment
indeed, but truly.

After passing the Iron Gate we come to a village, in the
neighbourhood of which some fragments of the Trajan's Bridge can be
discerned at low water.

The country now becomes flatter, particularly on the left bank,
where extend the immense plains of Wallachia, and the eye finds no
object on which it can rest. On the right hand rise terrace-like
rows of hills and mountains, and the background is bounded by the
sharply-defined lines of the Balkan range, rendered celebrated by
the passage of the Russians in 1829. The villages, scattered thinly
along the banks, become more and more miserable; they rather
resemble stables for cattle than human dwellings. The beasts remain
in the open fields, though the climate does not appear to be much
milder than with us in Austria; for to-day, nearly at the beginning
of April, the thermometer stood one degree below zero, and yesterday
we had only five degrees of warmth (reckoning by Reaumur). {30}