A Steam Voyage down the Danube, Volume 1 by Michael J. Quin

♦ ARRIVAL AT PESTH ♦

While I was preparing at Paris, towards the close of last summer, for a journey to Constantinople by the ordinary and very fatiguing course overland through Vienna, Semlin, and Belgrade, I was informed that steam-boats had been recently established on the Danube, which would enable me to descend that river to the Black sea, and thence to the Bosphorus. The hope of accomplishing my object by a route so novel, so attractive in itself, and so convenient in every respect, was too tempting to be resisted. I therefore lost no time in repairing to Vienna; and as the scenery of the Danube possesses but little interest between Presburg, where the steam navigation begins, and Pesth, the modern capital of Hungary, I preferred embarking at the latter place. I accordingly arrived there by the light of a brilliant moon, an hour or two after midnight, on the 24th of September, 1834; and as a variety of rumours had met me on the road, some stating that the steam-boat, or Dampshiffe, as it is called in that country, had been destroyed by its own engines, others that it had bulged on the rocks, or remained fixed fast in the sandy bed of the river from the want of water, it was with no small pleasure that I discovered the vessel of which I came in pursuit anchored quietly within the shade of the bridge of boats, that still forms the communication between Pesth and Buda.