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).