A steam voyage down the Danube, vol. 1 of 2 : With sketches of Hungary,…
"A steam voyage down the Danube, vol. 1 of 2" by Michael J. Quin is a travel narrative written in the early 19th century. It follows a pioneering steamboat journey from Pesth down the Danube toward the Iron Gates, blending river travel with sketches of Hungary, Wallachia, Servia, and Turkey. Quin’s first-person portraits of towns, river craft, landscapes, and a motley set of fellow travelers are threaded with observations on politics, commerce,
and the promise—and limits—of steam navigation. The opening of the work sets the scene with a preface noting that regular steam service then reached only as far as Galacz and hinting at Russian obstruction at the Danube’s mouths. The narrative begins with a moonlit arrival at Pesth, a sleepless night amid a lively congress of Hungarian ladies, and sharp snapshots of Pesth and Buda, river mills, towboats, and an overproud English captain. As the steamer heads south, Quin sketches his companions—Tyrolese emigrants, a ruined but magnetic Moldavian raconteur, and a Spanish-speaking Servian Jew with his daughter—while stops at Tolna and Mohacs yield vivid market scenes, women’s labor, costume, and rustic inns. Low water repeatedly hampers progress, once stranding the boat until cargo is shifted; evenings bring Tyrolese choruses and rambunctious card games. Passing Peterwardein, Neusatz, Semlin, and Belgrade under strict quarantine, he hears conflicting plague reports from Constantinople and admires the widening river and wooded islands. A night storm precedes the landfall at Moldava, where drought forces a switch to a fisherman’s flatboat for the run to Orsova, amid fresh vignettes of Wallachian and Servian life and the first mountains that hem the river. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
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About this eBook
| Author | Quin, Michael J. (Michael Joseph), 1796-1843 |
|---|---|
| Title | A steam voyage down the Danube, vol. 1 of 2 : With sketches of Hungary, Wallachia, Servia, and Turkey, &c. |
| Original Publication | London: Richard Bentley, 1835. |
| Credits | Richard Illner and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) |
| Language | English |
| LoC Class | DB: History: General and Eastern Hemisphere: Austria, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia |
| Subject | Europe -- Description and travel |
| Subject | Danube River |
| Category | Text |
| EBook-No. | 78133 |
| Release Date | Mar 7, 2026 |
| Copyright Status | Public domain in the USA. |
| Downloads | 299 downloads in the last 30 days. |
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