The Willows

The Willows, by Algernon
Blackwood

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Title: The Willows
Author: Algernon Blackwood
Release Date: March 4, 2004 [EBook #11438]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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THE WILLOWS
Algernon Blackwood (1907)

I
After leaving Vienna, and long before you come to Budapest, the
Danube enters a region of singular loneliness and desolation, where its
waters spread away on all sides regardless of a main channel, and the
country becomes a swamp for miles upon miles, covered by a vast sea
of low willow-bushes. On the big maps this deserted area is painted in a
fluffy blue, growing fainter in color as it leaves the banks, and across it
may be seen in large straggling letters the word Sumpfe, meaning
marshes.
In high flood this great acreage of sand, shingle-beds, and
willow-grown islands is almost topped by the water, but in normal
seasons the bushes bend and rustle in the free winds, showing their
silver leaves to the sunshine in an ever-moving plain of bewildering
beauty. These willows never attain to the dignity of trees; they have no
rigid trunks; they remain humble bushes, with rounded tops and soft
outline, swaying on slender stems that answer to the least pressure of
the wind; supple as grasses, and so continually shifting that they
somehow give the impression that the entire plain is moving and alive.
For the wind sends waves rising and falling over the whole surface,
waves of leaves instead of waves of water, green swells like the sea, too,
until the branches turn and lift, and then silvery white as their underside
turns to the sun.
Happy to slip beyond the control of the stern banks, the Danube here
wanders about at will among the intricate network of channels
intersecting the islands everywhere with broad avenues down which the
waters pour with a shouting sound; making whirlpools, eddies, and
foaming rapids; tearing at the sandy banks; carrying away masses of
shore and willow-clumps; and forming new islands innumerably which
shift daily in size and shape and possess at best an impermanent life,
since the flood-time obliterates their very existence.
Properly speaking, this fascinating part of the river's life begins soon
after leaving Pressburg, and we, in our Canadian canoe, with gipsy tent

and frying-pan on board, reached it on the crest of a rising flood about
mid-July. That very same morning, when the sky was reddening before
sunrise, we had slipped swiftly through still-sleeping Vienna, leaving it
a couple of hours later a mere patch of smoke against the blue hills of
the Wienerwald on the horizon; we had breakfasted below
Fischeramend under a grove of birch trees roaring in the wind; and had
then swept on the tearing current past Orth, Hainburg, Petronell (the
old Roman Carnuntum of Marcus Aurelius), and so under the frowning
heights of Thelsen on a spur of the Carpathians, where the March steals
in quietly from the left and the frontier is crossed between Austria and
Hungary.
Racing along at twelve kilometers an hour soon took us well into
Hungary, and the muddy waters--sure sign of flood--sent us aground on
many a shingle-bed, and twisted us like a cork in many a sudden
belching whirlpool before the towers of Pressburg (Hungarian, Poszony)
showed against the sky; and then the canoe, leaping like a spirited
horse, flew at top speed under the grey walls, negotiated safely the
sunken chain of the Fliegende Brucke ferry, turned the corner sharply
to the left, and plunged on yellow foam into the wilderness of islands,
sandbanks, and swamp-land beyond--the land of the willows.
The change came suddenly, as when a series of bioscope pictures snaps
down on the streets of a town and shifts without warning into the
scenery of lake and forest. We entered the land of desolation on wings,
and in less than half an hour there was neither boat nor fishing-hut nor
red roof, nor any single sign of human habitation and civilization
within sight. The sense of remoteness from the world of humankind,
the utter isolation, the fascination of this singular world of willows,
winds, and waters, instantly laid its spell upon us both, so that we
allowed laughingly to one another that we ought by rights to have held
some special kind of passport to admit us, and that we had, somewhat
audaciously, come without asking leave into a separate little