For this journey I had one companion, an early friend and medical adviser.  He had lived much in the world, had acquired a considerable fortune, had given up his profession, was now retired, and sought, like myself, in this journey repose of mind and the pleasures derived from natural scenery.  He was a man of a very powerful and acute understanding, but had less of the poetical temperament than any person whom I had ever known with similar vivacity of mind.  He was a severe thinker, with great variety of information, an excellent physiologist, and an accomplished naturalist.  In his reasonings he adopted the precision of a geometer, and was always upon his guard against the influence of imagination.  He had passed the meridian of life, and his health was weak, like my own, so that we were well suited as travelling companions, moving always slowly from place to place without hurry or fatigue.  I shall call this friend Eubathes.  I will say nothing of the progress of our journey through France and Germany; I shall dwell only upon that part of it which has still a strong interest for me, and where events occurred that I shall never forget.  We passed into the Alpine country of Austria by Lintz, on the Danube, and followed the course of the Traun to Gmunden, on the Traun See or lake of the Traun, where we halted for some days.  If I were disposed to indulge in minute picturesque descriptions I might occupy hours with details of the various characters of the enchanting scenery in this neighbourhood.  The vales have that pastoral beauty and constant verdure which is so familiar to us in England, with similar enclosures and hedge-rows and fruit and forest trees.  Above are noble hills planted with beeches and oaks.  Mountains bound the view, here covered with pines and larches, there raising their marble crests capped with eternal snows above the clouds.  The lower part of the Traun See is always, even in the most rainy season, perfectly pellucid; and the Traun pours out of it over ledges of rocks a large and magnificent river, beautifully clear and of the purest tint of the beryl.  The fall of the Traun, about ten miles below Gmunden, was one of our favourite haunts.  It is a cataract which, when the river is full, may be almost compared to that of Schaffhausen for magnitude, and possesses the same peculiar characters of grandeur in the precipitous rush of its awful and overpowering waters, and of beauty in the tints of its streams and foam, and in the forms of the rocks over which it falls, and the cliffs and woods by which it is overhung.  In this spot an accident, which had nearly been fatal to me, occasioned the renewal of my acquaintance in an extraordinary manner with the mysterious unknown stranger.  Eubathes, who was very fond of fly-fishing, was amusing himself by catching graylings for our dinner in the stream above the fall.  I took one of the boats which are used for descending the canal or lock artificially cut in the rock by the side of the fall, on which