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By four o'clock we were opposite Galatz, one of the most considerable commercial towns, with 8000 inhabitants, the only harbour the Russians possess on the Danube. Here we saw the first merchant-ships and barques of all kinds coming from the Black Sea. Some sea-gulls also, heralds of the neighbouring ocean, soared above our heads.
In these regions the most powerful nation at that time was the great Celtic people, which according to the native tradition had issued from its settlements on the Western Ocean and poured itself about the same time into the valley of the Po on the south of the main chain of the Alps and into the regions on the Upper Rhine and on the Danube to the north of that chain.
In some places, the deep sand could with difficulty be forced by assiduous tillage to yield thin crops of rye and oats. In other places, the ancient forests, from which the conquerors of the Roman empire had descended on the Danube, remained untouched by the hand of man. Where the soil was rich it was generally marshy, and its insalubrity repelled the cultivators whom its fertility attracted.
The Danube is so fiercely agitated by the stormy wind, that it rises into waves like a sea. We are suffering lamentably from cold; unable to warm ourselves, we stand gazing ruefully at the place where the stove stood once upon a time.
The "High-Water Commission" found it necessary to close all the drains, and steam-pumps were brought into requisition; the town was in fact besieged by water, and the enemy was literally at the gates. The ordinary business of life was suspended. The greeting in the street was not, "Good-day; how are you?" but, "What of the Danube?" "Do you know the last reading of the register?"
Both steps bespeak his desire to have ample space at his back before circling round his prey. On October 6th the corps of Soult and Lannes, helped by Murat's powerful cavalry, cut the Austrian lines on the Danube at Donauwörth, and gained a firm footing on the right bank.
The more secure control which the Romans now maintained over the territory within the limes, tended to its rapid civilization, and the Roman influence, if not the Roman arms, soon began to affect powerfully the regions beyond. After his careful survey of the Rhine end of the great defensive barrier, Trajan proceeded to consider it and plan it from the Danube.
The Roumanians that had been opposing him fell back northward to the Danube forts. They were hotly pursued by Bulgarians, who on October 29 were reported to be at Astrovo, fifty miles north of the Constanza-Cernavoda railway line. The possession of the latter was an immense advantage to Von Macksensen.
The victories of the Lombards recommended them to the friendship of the emperors; and at the solicitations of Justinian, they passed the Danube, to reduce, according to their treaty, the cities of Noricum and the fortresses of Pannonia.
The number of these swarms has never been stated; but so many of them perished in Hungary, that contemporary writers, despairing of giving any adequate idea of their multitudes, state that the fields were actually heaped with their corpses, and that for miles in its course the waters of the Danube were dyed with their blood.
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