THE IRON GATES.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume VI, Issue 273, 3 November 1916, Page 2

THE IRON GATES.

The Iron Gates, the last great defile of the Danube in its course to the Black Sea, and the finst point at which the Austrians launched an offensive against their new enemies, the Rumanians, is described in the following war geography bulletin •which the National Georgraphic bo- : ciety has issued : J “Contiary to the general belief ot readers to "whom the term ‘.lron Gates of the Danube’ is familiar, this famous defile of tiic chief waterway of Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria" and Servia, does not derive its name from precipitous walls of rock through which the waters dash in a narrow channel, as at the Kazan dfile, but from the dangerous boulders that fairly litter the riverbed for a distance of nearly two miles, beginning at the once strongly fortified island of Ada Kaleh, which was captured by Hungary in 1878, and is still inhabited by a picturesque colony of 500 Turks. Opposite this island, on the left bank of the Danube, and at the mouth of the inconsequential Bachna River, which here forms the HungarianRumanian boundary, is the attractive little, Rumanian Customs village of Verciorova, on the BudapestBucharest railway, 237 miles west of the latter city. . “It was not until 1890 that work was begun in a definite and comprehensive. manner to rid the Iron Gates of some of its gravest dangers to navigation. In that year a Hungarian engineering company undertook the task of removing nearly a million and a quarter yards of stone from the watercourse. Eight years after the enterprise was inaugurated the canal, which had been hewn from the solid rock on the Serbian side of the river, tvas ready to be thrown open to the steamers which ply- the Danube from Budapest to the Black Sea. The canal was designed to provide a year-round channel 10ft deep whereas the original course of the river was not navigable for more than nine months but of every twelve. “The opening of the waterway was the occasion for a great celebration in which three monarchs participated—Emperor Francis Joseph of Austria-Hungary, King Alexander of Serbia and King Carol (Charles I.) of Rumania. The festivities of the day were somewhat marred by the discovery that the current through the canal was so swift that, while steamers could rush through it in their downward journey, they' could not make the trip upward, so that the old river course had to be used for westward-bound traffic. “When the water is high, the rocks of the. Iron Gates are completely submerged, but they are only a few feet beneath the surface and the boiling, churning waves present a terrifying sight to the timid passenger as his steamer fights its way to the calmer reaches in the vicinity of Orcova (pronounced Orehova), the first town in Hungarian territory, five miles above the rapids, and ten journey by boat below Belgrade, the peace-times capital of Serbia. “Instead of the gloomy gorge which most travellers expect to find, the banks on each side of the Iron Gates present a beautiful picture of gently sloping hills, bountifully wooded. In the early summer these woods are a fairyland of flowers and the winds are fairly weighted with the fragance of wild blossoms in countless variety, while a short distance from the river the huntsman finds deer, wild boar, bear and other game in abundance. Enhancing the charm of the .scene are the songs of myriad birds which make their home in the forests.

“As the river progresses eastward into Rumania, the wooded hills disappear and are succeeded by barren sand ridges.”