A Thousand Miles in the Rob Roy Canoe on Rivers and Lakes of Europe Part 14

The bridge man was so intelligent in his remarks that we determined to stop there and breakfast, so I left the canoe in his charge and found my way to a little publichouse at the hamlet of Gros Kembs, and helped the wizened old lady who ruled there to make me an omelette--my help, by the bye, consisted in ordering, eating, and paying for the omelette, for the rest she was sure to do well enough, as all French women can, and no English ones.

The village gossips soon arrived, and each person who saw the boat came on to the inn to see the foreigner who could sail in such a _batteau_.

The courteous and respectful behaviour of Continental people is so uniform that the stranger among them is bound, I think, to amuse and interest these folk in return. This was most easily done by showing all my articles of luggage,[XXVIII.] and of course the drawings. A Testament with gilt leaves was, however, the chief object of curiosity, and all the _savants_ of the party tried in turn to read it.

[XXVIII.] See an inventory of these in the Appendix.

One of these as spokesman, and with commendable gravity, told me he had read in their district newspaper about the canoe, but he little expected to have the honour of meeting its owner.

Fancy the local organ of such a place! Is it called the "News of the Wold," or the "Gros Kembs Thunderer"? Well, whatever was the t.i.tle of the Gazette, it had an article about Pontius Pilate and my visit to the t.i.tisee in the Black Forest, and this it was no doubt which made these ca.n.a.l people so very inquisitive on the occasion.

The route now lay through the great forest of La Hardt, with dense thickets on each side of the ca.n.a.l, and not a sound anywhere to be heard but the hum now and then of a dragon fly. One or two woodmen met me as they trudged silently home from work, but there was a lonely feeling about the place without any of the romance of wild country.

In the most brilliant day the scenery of a ca.n.a.l has at best but scant liveliness, the whole thing is so prosaic and artificial, and in fact stupid, if one can ever say that of any place where there is fresh air and clear water, and blue sky and green trees.

Still I had to push on, and sometimes, for a change, to tow the boat while I walked. The difference between a glorious river encircling you with lofty rocks and this ca.n.a.l with its earthen walls was something like that between walking among high mountains and being shut up by mistake in Bloomsbury-square.

No birds chirped or sung, or even flew past, only the buzzing of flies was mingled with the distant shriek of a train on the railway. It is this railway which has killed the ca.n.a.l, for I saw no boats moving upon it. The long continued want of rain had also reduced its powers of accommodation for traffic, and the traffic is so little at the best that it would not pay to buy water for the supply. For in times of drought ca.n.a.l water is very expensive. It was said that the Regent's Ca.n.a.l, in London, had to pay 5,000_l._ for what they required last summer, in consequence of the dryness of the season.

At length we came to a great fork of the ca.n.a.l in a wide basin, and I went along the branch to the town of Mulhouse, a place of great wealth, the largest French cotton town--the Manchester of France.

The street boys here were very troublesome, partly because they were intelligent, and therefore inquisitive, and partly because manufacturing towns make little urchins precocious and forward in their manners.

I hired a truck from a woman and hired a man to drag it, and so took the boat to the best hotel, a fine large house, where they at once recognized the canoe, and seemed to know all about it from report.

The hotel porter delayed so long next morning to wheel the boat to the railway, that when we took her into the luggage office as usual and placed the boat on the counter with the trunks and band-boxes, the officials declined to put it in the train.

This was the first time it had been refused on a railroad, and I used every kind of persuasion, but in vain, and this being the first application of the kind on French soil we felt that difficulties were ahead, if this precedent was to hold good.

Subsequent experience showed that the French railways will not take a canoe as baggage; while the other seven or eight countries we had brought the boat through were all amenable to pressure on this point.

We had desired to go by the railway only a few miles, but it would have enabled me to avoid about fifty locks on the ca.n.a.l and thus have saved two tedious days. As, however, they would not take the boat in a pa.s.senger train we carried her back to the ca.n.a.l, and I determined to face the locks boldly, and to regard them as an exercise of patience and of the flexor muscles, as it happens sometimes one's walk is only "a const.i.tutional."

The Superintendent of the Rhine and Rhone Ca.n.a.l was very civil, and endeavoured to give me the desirable information I required, but which he had not got, that is to say, the length, depth, and general character of the several rivers we proposed to navigate in connexion with streams less "ca.n.a.lize," so I had to begin again as usual, without any knowledge of the way.

With rather an ill-tempered "adieu" to Mulhouse, the Rob Roy set off again on its voyage. The water a.s.sumed quite a new aspect, now that one _must_ go by it, but it was not so much the water as the locks which were objectionable. For at each of these there is a certain form of operations to be gone through--all very trifling and without variety, yet requiring to be carefully performed, or you may have the boat injured, or a ducking for yourself.

When we get to a lock I have to draw to the bank, open my waterproof covering, put my package and paddle ash.o.r.e, then step out and haul the boat out of the water. By this time two or three persons usually congregate. I select the most likely one, and ask him to help in such a persuasive but dignified manner that he feels it an honour to carry one end of the boat while I take the other, and so we put her in again above the barrier, and, if the man looks poor, I give him a few sous. At some of the locks they asked me for a "carte de permission," or pa.s.s for travelling on their ca.n.a.l, but I laughed the matter off, and when they pressed it with a "mais monsieur," I kept treating the proposal as a good joke, until the officials were fairly baffled and gave in. The fact is, we had got into the ca.n.a.l as one gets over the hedge on to a public road, and as I did not use any of the water in locks or any of the lock-keepers' time, and the "pa.s.s" was a mere form, price 5_d._, it was but reasonable to go unquestioned; and besides, this "carte" could not be obtained except at the beginning. Having set off late, we went on until about sunset, when the route suddenly pa.s.sed into the river Ill, a long dull stream, which flows through the Vosges into the Rhine.

This stream was now quite stagnant, and a mere collection of pools covered by thick sc.u.m. It was therefore a great comfort to have only a short voyage upon it.

When the Rob Roy again entered the ca.n.a.l, an acquaintance was formed with a fine young lad, who was reading as he sauntered along. He was reading of canoe adventures in America, and so I got him to walk some miles beside me, and to help the boat over some locks, telling him he could thus see how different actual canoeing was from the book stories about it made up of romance! He was pining for some expansion of his sphere, and specially for foreign travel, and above all to see England.

We went to an _auberge_, where I ordered a bottle of wine, the cost of which was twopence halfpenny. After he left, and as it was now dark, I halted, put my boat in a lock-keeper's house, and made his son conduct me to the little village of Illfurth, a most unsophisticated place indeed, with a few vineyards on a hill behind it, though the railway has a road station near. It was not easy to mistake which was the best house here even in the dark, so I inquired of Madame at "The White Horse" if she could give me a bed. "Not in a room for one alone; three others will be sleeping in the same chamber."

This she had answered after glancing at my puny package and travel-worn dress, but her ideas about the guest were enlarged when she heard of how he had come, and so she managed (they always do if you give time and smiles and show sketches) to allot me a nice little room to myself, with two beds of the hugest size, a water-jug of the most minute dimensions, and sheets very coa.r.s.e and very clean. Another omelette was consumed while the customary visitors surrounded the benighted traveller; carters, porters, all of them with courteous manners, and behaving so well to me and to one another, and talking such good sense, as to make me feel how different from this is the noisy taproom of a roadside English "public."

Presently two fine fellows of the Gendarmerie came in for their half bottle of wine, at one penny, and as both of them had been in the Crimea there was soon ample subject for most interesting conversation. This was conducted in French, but the people here usually speak a patois utterly impossible for one to comprehend. I found they were discussing me under various conjectures, and they settled at last that I must be rather an odd fish, but certainly "a gentleman," and probably "n.o.ble." They were most surprised to hear I meant to stop all the next day at Illfurth, simply because it was Sunday, but they did not fail to ask for my pa.s.sport, which until this had been carried all the way without a single inquiry on the subject.

The sudden change from a first-rate hotel this morning to the roadside inn at Illfurth, was more entertaining on account of its variety than for its agreeables; but in good health and good weather one can put up with anything.

The utter silence of peaceful and cool night in a place like this reigns undisturbed until about four o'clock in early morn, when the first sound is some matutinal c.o.c.k, who crows first because he is proud of being first awake. After he has a.s.serted his priority thus once or twice, another deeper toned rooster replies, and presently a dozen c.o.c.ks are all in full song, and in different keys. In half an hour you hear a man's voice; next, some feminine voluble remarks; then a latch is moved and clicks, the dog gives a morning bark, and a horse stamps his foot in the stable because the flies have aroused to breakfast on his tender skin. At length a pig grunts, his gastric juice is fairly awake, the day is begun. And so the stream of life, thawed from its sleep, flows gently on again, and at length the full tide of village business is soon in agitation, with men's faces and women's quite as full of import as if this French Stoke Pogis were the capital of the world.

While the inmates prepare for early ma.s.s, and my bowl of coffee is set before me, there are four dogs, eight cats, and seven canaries (I counted them) all looking on, moving, twittering, mewing, each evidently sensible that a being from some other land is present among them; and as these little pets look with doubtful inquiring eyes on the stranger, there is felt more strongly by him too, "Yes, I am in a foreign country."

On Sunday I had a quiet rest, and walk, and reading, and an Englishman, who had come out for a day from Mulhouse to fish, dined in the pleasant arbour of the inn with his family. One of his girls managed to fall into a deep pond and was nearly drowned, but I heard her cries, and we soon put her to rights. This Briton spoke with quite a foreign accent, having been six years in France; but his Lancashire dialect reappeared in conversation, and he said he had just been reading about the canoe in a Manchester paper. His children had gone that morning to a Sunday-school before they came out by railway to fish in the river here; but I could not help contrasting their rude manners with the good behaviour of the little "lady and gentleman" children of my host. One of these, Philibert, was very intelligent, and spent an hour or two with me, so we became great friends. He asked all kinds of questions about England and America, far more than I was able to answer. I gave him a little book with a picture in it, that he might read it to his father, for it contained the remarkable conversation between Napoleon and his Marshal at St. Helena concerning the Christian religion, a paper well worth reading, whoever spoke the words.

This Sunday being an annual village fete a band played, and some very uncouth couples waltzed the whole day. Large flocks of sheep, following their shepherds, wandered over the arid soil. The poor geese, too, were flapping their wings in vain as they tried to swim in water an inch deep, where usually there had been pleasant pools in the river. I sympathized with the geese, for I missed my river sadly too.

My bill here for the two nights, with plenty to eat and drink, amounted to five shillings in all, and I left good Madame Nico with some regret, starting again on the ca.n.a.l, which looked more dully and dirty than before.

After one or two locks this sort of travelling became so insufferable that I suddenly determined to change my plans entirely--for is not one free? By the present route several days would be consumed in going over the hills by a series of tedious locks; besides, this very ca.n.a.l had been already traversed by the four-oar boat Waterwitch some years ago.

A few moments of thought, and I got on the bank to look for a way of deliverance. Far off could be seen the vine-clad hills of the Vosges, and I decided at once to leave the ca.n.a.l, cross the country to those hills, cart the canoe over the range, and so reach the source of the Moselle, and thus begin to paddle on quite another set of rivers. We therefore turned the prow back, went down the ca.n.a.l, and again entered the river Ill, but soon found it was now too shallow to float even my canoe. Once more I retraced my way, ascending the locks, and, pa.s.sing by Illfurth, went on to reach a village where a cart could be had.

Desperation made me paddle hard even in the fierce sun, but it was not that this so much troubled me as the humiliation of thus rowing back and forward for miles on a dirty, stagnant ca.n.a.l, and pa.s.sing by the same locks two or three times, with the full conviction that the people who gazed at the procedure must believe me not only to be mad (this much one can put up with), but furiously insane, and dangerous to be at large.

Whether we confess it or not we all like to be admired. The right or wrong of this depends on for what and from whom we covet admiration. But when the deed you attract attention by is neither a great one, nor a deed which others have not done or cannot do, but is one that all other people could but would not do, then you are not admired as remarkable but only stared at as singular.

The shade of a suspicion that this is so in any act done before lookers-on is enough to make it hateful. Nay, you have then the sufferings of a martyr, without his cause or his glory. But I fear that instead of getting a cart for the canoe I am getting out of depth in metaphysics, which means, you know, "When ane maun explains till anither what he disna understaun himsel, that's metapheesics."

Well, when we came to the prescribed village, named Haidwiller, we found they had plenty of carts, but not one would come to help me even for a good round sum. It was their first day with the grapes, and "ancient customs must be observed"; so we went on still further to another village, where they were letting out the water from the ca.n.a.l to repair a lock.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "The Rob Roy on wheels."]

Here was a position of unenviable repose for the poor Rob Roy! No water to float in, and no cart to carry her.

To aid deliberation I attacked a large cake of hot flour baked by the lock-keeper's dirty wife, and we stuck plums in it to make it go down, while the man hied off to the fields to get some animal that could drag a clumsy vehicle--cart is too fine a name for it--which I had impressed from a ploughman near.

The man came back leading a gloomy-looking bullock, and we started with the boat now travelling on wheels, but at a most dignified pace.[XXIX.]

[XXIX.] The sketch represents the lady cow which dragged the cart at Lauffenburg, but it will do almost equally well for the present equipage.

This was the arrangement till we reached another village, which had no vineyards, and where therefore we soon found a horse, instead of the gruff bullock; while the natives were lost in amazement to see a boat in a cart, and a big foreigner gabbling beside it.

The sun was exceedingly hot, and the road dusty; but I felt the walk would be a pleasant change, though my driver kept muttering to himself about my preference of pedestrianism to the fearful jolts of his cart.

We pa.s.sed thus through several villages on a fine fruitful plain, and at some of them the horse had to bait, or the driver to lunch, or his employer to refresh the inner man, in every case the population being favoured with an account by the driver of all he knew about the boat, and a great deal more.

At one of the inns on the road some new wine was produced on the table.

It had been made only the day before, and its colour was exactly like that of cold tea, with milk and sugar in it, while its taste was very luscious and sweet. This new wine is sometimes in request, but especially among the women. "Corn shall make the young men cheerful, and new wine the maids." (Zech. ix. 17.)

CHAPTER XII.

Bonfire--My wife--Matthews--Tunnel picture--Imposture--Fancy--Moselle--Cocher--"Sat.u.r.day Review"

Tracts--Gymnastics--The paddle--A spell--Overhead--Feminine forum--Public breakfast.