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

♦ PASTORAL SCENE ♦

Still falling down with the stream, as our rowers had not yet finished their matin meal, we stole quietly along amid tremendous piles of rock, which rose higher and higher as we proceeded, sometimes barren of the slightest traces of vegetation, sometimes covered with brambles the whole appearing as if they had been made the sport of more than one volcanic convulsion. A grassy glen opening on our right, exhibiting a clustre of elms, beneath which a Servian boy was tending his swine, and amusing himself by playing a simple pastoral air on a reed, offered an agreeable contrast to the frowning horrors around us. The eye ranged beyond the glen over a richly-wooded valley, opening far among the rocks, where a group of women seemed engaged in cooking by a fire, whose smoke curled upwards among the trees.