Jan. ag, igoa.1 
Jule She will be Used on the St. Lawrence River, and is 
85ft. over all, 77ft. waterline, 12ft. 6in. breadth and 4ft, 
(an. draft. 
™ ™ ^ 
The way in which the business of Mr. W. Starling 
Burgess has increased during the past year has been the 
subject of much comment. Shortly after opening his 
office he found it necessary to have an assistant, and he 
secured the services of Mr. Elliot W. Burwell, who was 
for years in Mr. Arthur Binney's employ. Mr. Burgess 
now announces the brokerage, employment and insurance 
departments of his business would be looked after by Mr. 
Hollis Burgess. 
— <$> — 
Down the Danube in a Canadian 
Canoe. — I. 
(From MacmillatCs Magazine.) 
It was a brilliant day in early June when we launched 
our canoe on the waters of the Danube, not one hundred 
yards from its souice in the Black Forest, and com- 
menced our. journev of four and twenty hundred miles to 
the Black Sea. Two weeks before we had sent her from 
London to Donaueschingen by freight, and when the rail- 
way company telegraphed the word arrived, we posted 
after her with tent, kit bags, blankets, cameras, and cook- 
ing apparatus. ? 
Donaueschingen is an old-fashioned little town on the 
southern end of the Schwarzwald plateau, and the radway 
that runs through it brings it apparently no nearer to 
the world. It breathes a spirit of remoteness and tran- 
quillity born of the forests that encircle it, and that fill the 
air with pleasant odors and gentle murmurings. 
There, lying snugly on a shelf in the goods shed, we 
found our slender craft, paddles and boat hook tied 
securely to the thwarts — and without a crack ! "No duty 
to pay," said the courteous official, after examining an 
enormous book, "and only seventeen marks for freight 
charges the whole way from Oxford." She was 16ft. long 
(with a beam of 34m.), and had the slim, graceful lines 
and deep curved ribs of the true Rice Lake (Ontario) 
build. Two or three inches would float her, and yet she 
could ride safely at top speed over the waves of a rapid 
that would have capsized a boat twice her size. Splendid 
little craft, she bore us faithfully and well, almost like a 
thing of life and intelligence, round many a ticklish cor- 
ner and under more than one dangerous bridge, though 
this article will only outline some of our adventures in 
her over the first thousand miles as far as Budapest. 
From the yard of the Schuetzen Inn, where she lay all 
night, we carried her on our shoulders below the pic- 
turesque stone bridge and launched her in a pool where 
the roach and dace fairly made the water dance. You 
could toss a stone over the river here without an effort, 
and when we had said farewell to the kindly villagers and 
steered out into midstream, there was so little water that 
the stroke of the paddle laid bare the shining pebbles upon 
the bottom and grated along the bed. 
"Happy journey!" cried the townsfolk standing on the 
bank in blue trousers and waving their straw hats. "And 
quick return," added the hotel keeper, who had over- 
charged us abominably in every possible item. We bore 
him little malice, however, for there were no inns or 
hotel bills ahead of us; and uncommonly light-hearted 
were we as the canoe felt the stream move beneath her 
and slipped away at a good speed down the modest little 
river that must drop 2,200ft. before it pours its immense 
volume through three arms into the Black Sea. 
At first our progress was slow. Patches of white weeds 
everywhere choked the river and often brought us to a 
complete standstill, and in less than ten minutes we were 
aground in a shallow. We had to tuck up our trousers 
and wade. This was a frequent occurrence during the 
day and we soon realized that the hundred and twenty- 
five miles toi Ulm, before the tributaries commence to 
pour in their icy floods from the Alps, would be slow and 
difficult. But what of that? It was glorious summer weather; 
the mountain airs were intoxicating, and the scenery 
charming beyond words. Nowhere that day was the 
river more than forty yards across, or over 3ft. deep. The 
white weeds lay over the surface like thick cream, but the 
canoe glided smoothly over them, swishing as she passed. 
Her slim nose opened a pathway that her stern left gently 
hissing with bubbles as the leaves rose again to the sur- 
face; and behind us there was ever a little milk-white 
track in which the blossoms swam and danced in the 
sunshine as the current raced merrily along the new 
channel thus made for it. 
Winding in and out among broad fields and acres of 
reeds, we dropped gently down across the great plateau 
of the Black Forest mountains. The day was hot and 
clear, and overhead a few white clouds sailed with us, as 
it were for company's sake, down the blue reaches of the 
sky. Usually we coasted along the banks, the . reeds 
touching the sides of the canoe and the wind playing over 
hosts of nodding flowers and fields level to our eyes with 
standing hay, while, in the distance, the mountain slopes, 
speckled with blue shadows, were ever opening into m-w 
▼istas and valleys. Here the peaceful Danube still dreams, 
lying in her beauty sleep as it were, and with no hint of 
the racing torrent that comes later with full waking. 
Pretty villages appeared along the banks at intervals. 
Pforen was the first, snugly gathered into the nook of 
the hills; a church, a few red-roofed houses, a wo- den 
fridge and a castle with a fine stork staring down at us 
from her nest in the ruined tower. The peasants were 
away in the fields and we drifted lazily by without so 
much as a greeting. Neidingen was the second, where a 
huge crucifix presided over the center of the quaint 
bridge, and where we landed to buy butter, potatoes and 
onions. Gutmadingen was the third ; and here a miller 
and his men helped our portage over the weir while his 
wife stood in the hot sunshine and asked questions. 
"Where are you going to ?" 
"The Black Sea. She had never heard of it, and evi- 
dently thought we were making fun of her. "Ulm, then," 
Ah ! Ulm she knew. "But it's an enormous distance ! 
And is the tent for rain?" she asked. 
"No; for sleeping in at night." 
FOREST ANB STREAM. 
"Ach was!" she exclaimed. "Well, I wouldn't sleep a 
night in that tent, or go a yard in that boat, for anything 
you could give me." , 
The miller was more appreciative. He gave us a de- 
licious drink— a sort of mead, which was most refreshing 
and which, he assured us, would not affect the head in 
the least— and told us there were twenty-four more weirs 
before we reached Ulm, the beginning of navigation. But 
none the less he, too, had his questions to ask. 
"I thought all the Englishmen had gone to the war. 
The papers here say that England is quite empty." 
The temptation was too great to resist. "No,' we said 
gravely, "only the big ones went to the war. [We were 
both over six feet.] England is still full of men of the 
smaller sizes like ourselves." The expresison on his face 
lightened our work considerably for the next mile. 
Soon after the river left the plateau behind it and took 
a sudden leap, into the Donauthal. We shot round a 
corner about 6 o'clock and came upon a little willow 
island in midstream. Here we landed and pitched our 
tent on the long grass, made a fire, peeled the onions, fried 
our strips of beef with the potatoes, and made excellent 
tea. On all sides the pines crept down close into the 
narrowing valley. In the evening sunlight, with long 
shadows slanting across the hills, we smoked our pipes 
after our meal. There were no flies and the air was cool 
and sweet. Presently the moon rose over the ridge of 
forest behind us and the lights of Immendingen, twinkling 
through the shadows, were just visible a mile below us. 
The night was cool and the river hurried almost silently 
past our tent door. When at length we went to bed. on 
cork mattresses, with india rubber sheets under us and 
thick Austrian blankets over us, everything was sopping 
with dew. 
The bells of Immendingen coming down the valley were 
the first sounds we heard as we went to bathe at 7 o'clock 
next morning in the cold sparkling water; and later, when 
we scrambled over the great Immendingen weir no vil- 
lagers came to look on and say "Englander, Englander," 
for it was Sunday morning and they were all at mass. 
The valley grew narrower and limestone cliffs shone 
white through the sombre forests. It was very lonely 
between the villages. The river, now 6byds. wide, swept 
in great semi-circular reaches under the very shadow of 
the hills ; storks stood about fishing in the shallows ; wild 
swans flew majestically in front of us— we came across 
several nests with eggs — and duck were plentiful every- 
where. Once, in an open space on the hills, we saw a 
fine red fox motionless in his observation of some duck — 
and ourselves. Presently he trotted away into the cover 
of the woods and the ducks quacked their thanks to us. 
Then suddenly, above Mohringen, just when we were 
congratulating ourselves that wading was over for good, 
the river dwindled away into a thin trickling line of water 
that showed the shape of every single pebble in its bed. 
We went aground continually. Half the Danube had 
escaped through fissures in the ground. It comes out 
again, on the other side of the mountains, as the river Ach, 
and flows into the Lake of Constance. The river was 
now less in volume than when we started, clear as crys- 
tal, dancing in the sunshine, weaving like a silver thread 
through the valley, and making delightful music over 
the stones. Yet most of our journey that day was wading. 
Trousers were always tucked up to the knees, and we had 
to be ready to jump out at a moment's notice. Before the 
numberless little rapids the question was: "Is there 
enough water to float us? Can we squeeze between those 
rocks? Is that wave a hidden stone, or merely the cur- 
rent?" The steersman stood up to get a better view of the 
channel and avoid the sun's glare on the water, and in this 
way we raced down many a bit of leaping, hissing water; 
and, incidentally, had many a sudden shock before the 
end, tumbling out headlong, banging against stones, and 
shipping water all the time. The canoe got sadly scratched, 
and we decided at length to risk no more of these baby 
rapids. A torn canoe in the Black Forest, miles from a 
railway, spelt helplessness. Thereafter we waded the 
rapids. It was a hot and laborious process — the feet icy 
cold, the head burning hot, and the back always bent 
double. Weirs, too, became frequent, and unloading and 
reloading was soon reduced to a science. In the afternoon 
the villagers poured out to start and look on. They rarely 
offered to help, but stood round as close as possible while 
we unloaded, examining articles, and asking questions 
all the time. They had no information to give. Few of 
them knew anything of the river ten miles below their 
particular village, and none had ever been to Ulm. Now 
and then there was a skeptical "Das ist unmoglich (that's 
impossible)," when we mentioned Ulm as our goal. Ach 
je! They're mad — in that boat t" 
From Donaueschingen to Ulm there is a weir in every 
five miles, and our progress was slow. Whenever the 
river grew deep we learned to know that a dam was near ; 
and below a dam there was scarcely enough water to 
float an egg shell. But there was no occasion to hurry; 
everything was done in leisurely fashion in this great 
garden of Wiirtemberg, and most of the villages were 
sound asleep. At Mohringen, indeed, we got the impres- 
sion that the village had slept for at least a hundred years 
and that our bustling arrival had suddenly awakened it. 
It lay in a clearing of the forest, in a charming mossy 
bed that no doubt made sleep a delightful necessity. The 
miller invited us to the inn, where we found a score of 
peasants in their peaked hats and black suits of broad- 
cloth sitting each in front of a foaming tankard ; but they 
drank so slowly that a hundred years did not seem too 
long to finish a tankard. There was very little conversa- 
tion, and they stared unconscionably, bowing gravely 
when we ordered their stone mugs to be refilled and re- 
garding us all the time with steady, expressionless in- 
terest. In due time, however, they digested us. and then 
the stream of inevitable questions 'burst forth. 
"You bivouac? You go to the sea? If you ever get to 
Ulm ! You have come the whole way from London in 
that shell?" 
We gulped down the excellent cold beer and hurried 
away. The river dwindled to a width of a dozen yards 
and wading was incessant. We lightened the canoe as 
much as possible, but, our kit having been already re- 
duced to what seemed only strictly necessary, th*re was 
little enough to throw away — a tin plate, a tin cup, a 
fork, a spoon, a knife, and a red cushion. These we 
piled up in a little mound upon _ the bank with a branch 
stuck in the ground to draw attention. I wonder who is 
now using those costly articles. 
7? 
Another series of picturesque villages glided past us: 
Tuttlingen, famous (as the dirty water proclaimed) for 
its tanneries, and where a couple of hundred folk in their 
Sunday clothes watched our every movement as we 
climbed round two high and difficult weirs; Nendnngen, 
where a kind and silent miller gave us of his cool mead; 
Miilheim straggling half-way up the hills with its red- 
brown roofs and church and castle all mingled together in 
most picturesque confusion, as if it had slipped down 
from the summit and never got straight again; and Fnedi- 
gen, where we laid in fresh supplies, and found two 
Germans who had spent years in California, and whose 
nasal voices sounded strangely out of place among^ their 
guttural neighbors. "Camp anywheres you please, they 
said, "and no one'U objec' to your fires so long as you 
put 'em out." 
I forget how many more villages ending in "ingen" we 
passed; but now that the heat of the day, and the labor 
and toil of wading are forgotten, they come before me 
again with their still, peaceful loveliness like a string of 
quaint jewels strung along the silver thread of the river. 
Soon the water increased and the canoe sped onward 
among the little waves and rapids like a winged thing. 
The mountains became higher, the valley narrower. Lime- 
stone cliffs, scooped and furrowed by the eddies of a far 
larger Danube thousands of years before, rose gleaming 
out of the pine woods about their base. We plunged, in 
among the Swabian Alps, and the river tumbled very fast 
and noisily along a rock-strewn bed. It darted across 
from side to side, almost as though the cliffs were tossing 
it across in play to each other. One moment we were in 
blazing sunlight, the next in deep shadow under the 
cliffs. There was no room for houses, and no need for 
bridges; boats we never saw; big, gray fish hawks, 
circling buzzards, storks by the score had this part of the 
river all to themselves. 
Suddenly we turned a sharp corner and shot at_ full 
speed into an immense cauldron. It was a perfect circle, 
half a mile in diameter, bound in by the limestone cliffs. 
The more ancient river had doubtless filled it with a 
terrifying whirlpool, for the rocks were strangely scooped 
and eaten into curves hundreds of feet above us. But now 
its bottom wag a clean flat field, where the little stream, 
with its audacious song, whipped along at the very foot 
of the cliffs on one side of the circle. 
It was a lonely secluded spot, the very place for a camp. 
Though only 5 o'clock on a June afternoon, the cliffs 
kept out the sunshine. We sank the canoe, to soak up 
cracks and ease strained ribs, and soon had our tent up, 
and a fire burning. Then we climbed the cliffs. It was 
a puzzle to see how the river got in or got out. As we 
climbed we came across deep recesses and funnel-shaped 
holes, caves with spiral openings in the roof, and pillars 
shaped like an hour-glass. Across the gulf the ruined 
castle of Kallenberg stood on a point of rock that was 
apparently inaccessible, and when the evening star shone 
over its broken battlements, it might well have been a 
ghostly light held aloft by the shades of the robber barons 
who once lived in it. When we went to bed at 10 
o'clock the full moon shone upon the white cliffs with a 
dazzling brilliance that seemed to turn them into ice, while 
the deep shadows over the river made the scene strangely 
impressive. Only the tumbling of the water and the 
chirping of the crickets broke the silence. In the night 
we woke and thought we heard people moving round the 
tent, but, on going out to see, the canoe was still safe, 
and the white moonshine revealed no figures. It was 
doubtless the river talking in its sleep, or the wind wan- 
dering lost among the bushes. 
At 5 o'clock next morning I looked out of the tent and 
found our cauldron full of seething mist, through which 
the sunshine was just beginning to force a way. An 
hour later the tent was too hot for comfort. 
All day we followed the gorge, with many a ruined 
castle of impregnable position looking down upon us 
from the cliffs. The valley widened about noon, and 
fields ablaze with poppies lay in the sun, while tall yellow 
flags fringed the widening river. In another great circle, 
similar in formation to that of Kallenberg, but five times 
as large, we found the monastery of Beuron with its 
eighty monks and fifty lay brothers. We batbed and put 
on our celluloid collars (full dress in an outfit where 
weight is of supreme importance) and went up to the 
gates. A bearded monk, acting as doorkeeper, thrust a 
smiling face through the wicket in answer to our sum- 
mons and informed us with genuine courtesy that the 
monastery was not open to visitors at this time of year. 
"There are many visitors in summer, I regret," he ex- 
plained. 
"Visitors! How do they get here?" 
"By road ; they come from long distances, driving and 
walking." 
"But we may never be here again; we are on our way to 
the Black Sea." 
"Ah, then ,you will see far more wonderful things than 
this in your journey." He remained firm; so, by way of 
consolation we went to the Gasthaus Zur Sonne and en- 
joyed a meal — the first for a week that we had not cooked 
ourselves. 
It was a quiet, otlt-of-the-world spot. Monks were 
everywhere working in the fields, plowing and hay- 
making; and it was here I first saw sheep following a 
shepherd. A curious covered bridge, lined with cruci- 
fixes, crossed the river, and we took an interesting photo- 
graph of a monk in a black straw hat and gown going 
over it with a cloud of dust in the blazing sunshine fol- 
lowed by fifty sheep. There was contentment on all faces, 
but the place must be dreadfully lonely and desolate in 
winter. We bought immense loaves in the monks' bakery, 
and matches, cigars, sugar, and meat in a Devotionshand- 
lung (store for religious articles). 
Sigmarmgen, with its old rock-perched castle and its 
hundred turrets gleaming in the sum, was reached just in 
time to find shelter from a thunderstorm that seemed to 
come out of a clear sky. There was a hurricane of wind, 
and the rain filled the quaint old streets with dashing 
spray. In an hour it cleared away, and we pushed on 
again; but the river had meanwhile risen nearly a foot. 
The muddy water rushed by with turbulent eddies, and 
the bridges were crowded with people to see us pass. 
They stood in silent dark rows with "Hit gesture or re- 
mark, and stared. Suddenly the storm broke again with 
redoubled fury. Up went their umbrellas, and we heard 
their guttural laughter. In a few minutes we were soaked, 
and no doubt cut a sorry figure as we launched the canoe 
