A Thousand Miles in the Rob Roy Canoe on Rivers and Lakes of Europe Part 17

But never mind, all this counted in the day's work, and all the trouble of it was forgotten after a good night's sleep, or was entirely recompensed by some interesting adventure.

The water of the Moselle is so clear that the scenery under the surface continually occupied my attention. In one long reach, unusually deep and quiet, I happened to be gazing down at some huge trout, and accidentally observed a large stone, the upper part of a fine column, at the very bottom of the water, at least ten feet below me. The capital showed it to be Ionic, and near it was another, a broken pediment of large dimensions, and a little further on a pedestal of white marble. I carefully examined both banks, to see if a Roman villa or bridge, or other ruin, indicated how these subaqueous reliques had come into this strange position, and I inquired diligently at Charmes, the next town; but although much curiosity was shown on the subject, no information was obtained, except that the Romans had built a fort somewhere on the river (but plainly not at that spot), so we may consider that the casual glance at the fish revealed a curious fragment of the past hitherto probably unnoticed.

After pulling along the Moselle, from as near to its source as my canoe could find water, until the scenery became dull at Charmes, we went by railway from thence to Blainville, on the river Meurthe, which is a tributary of the Moselle, for I thought some new scenery might be found in this direction. The Rob Roy was therefore sent by itself in a goods-train, the very first separation between us for three months. It seemed as if the little boat, leaning on its side in the truck, turned from me reproachfully, and we foreboded all sorts of accidents to its delicate frame, but the only thing lost was a sponge, a necessary appendage to a boat's outfit when you desire to keep it perfectly dry and clean.

Two railway porters, with much good-humoured laughing, carried the Rob Roy from the station to the river's edge, and again we paddled cheerily along, and on a new river, too, with scenery and character quite different from that of the Moselle.

The Meurthe winds through rich plains of soft earth, with few rocks and little gravel. But then in its shallows it has long thick mossy weeds, all under the surface. These were found to be rather troublesome, because they got entangled with my paddle, and since they could not be seen beforehand the best channel was not discernible, as where rocks or gravel give those various forms of ripples which the captain of a canoe soon gets to know as if they were a chart telling the number of inches of depth. Moreover, when you get grounded among these long weeds, all pointed down stream, it is very difficult to "back out," for it is like combing hair against the grain.

The larger rivers in France are all thoroughly fished. In every nook you find a fisherman. They are just as numerous here as in Germany they are rare. And yet one would think that fishing is surely more adapted to the contemplative German than to the vivacious French. Yet, here they are by hundreds, both men and women, and every day, each staring intently on a tiny float, or at the gra.s.shopper bait, and quite satisfied if now and then he can pull up a gudgeon the size of your thumb.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "French Fishers."]

Generally, these people are alone, and when they asked me at hotels if I did not feel lonely in the canoe, the answer was, "Look at your fishermen, for hours by choice alone. They have something to occupy attention every moment, and so have I." Sometimes, however, there is a whole party in one clumsy boat.

The _pater familias_ sits content, and recks not if all his time is spent in baiting his line and lighting his pipe. The lazy "hopeful" lies at full length on the gra.s.s, while a younger brother strains every nerve to hook a knowing fish that is laughing at him under water, and winking its pale eye to see the fisher just toppling over. Mademoiselle chatters whether there are bites or not, and another, the fair cousin, has got on sh.o.r.e, where she can bait her hook and set her cap and simper to the bold admirer by her side.

Not one of these that I have spoken to had ever seen an artificial fly.

Then besides, we have the fishers with nets. These are generally three men in a boat, with its stem and its stern both c.o.c.ked up, and the whole affair looking as if it must upset or sink. Such boats were painted by Raphael in the great Cartoons, where all of us must have observed how small the boat is compared with the men it carries.

Again, there are some young lads searching under the stones for _ecrevisses_, the freshwater prawns, much in request, but giving very little food for a great deal of trouble. Near these fishers the pike plies his busy sportsman's life below the surface, and I have sometimes seen a poor little trout leap high into the air to escape from the long-nosed pursuer, who followed him even out of the water, and snapped his jaws on the sweet morsel impudently. This sound, added to the very suspicious appearance of the Rob Roy gliding among the islands, decides the doubtful point with a duck, the leader of a flock of wild ducks that have been swimming down stream in front of me with a quick glance on each side, every one of them seemingly indignant at this intrusion on their haunts; at last they find it really will not do, so with a scream and a spring they flap the water and rise in a body to seek if there be not elsewhere at least some one nook to nestle in where John Bull does not come.

That bell you hear tinkling is at the ferry, to call the ferryman who lives at the other side, and he will jump into his clumsy boat, which is tied to a pulley running on a rope stretched tight across the river. He has only to put his oar obliquely on the gunwale, and the transverse pressure of the current brings the boat rapidly to the other bank.

Paddling on, after a chat with the ferryman (and he is sure to be ready for that), a wonderful phenomenon appears. We see a house, large, new, and of two stories high, it has actually moved. We noticed it a few minutes ago, and now it has changed its position. I gaze in astonishment, and while we ponder, lo! the whole house entirely disappears. Now, the true explanation of this is soon found when we get round the next corner of the reach;--the house is a great wooden bathing "etabliss.e.m.e.nt," built on a barge, and it is being slowly dragged up the stream.

After wonder comes sentiment. Three women are seen on the river-bank evidently in great alarm: a mother, a daughter, and a servant maid, who searched in vain for two boys, supposed to have gone away to fish, but now missing for many hours. They eagerly inquired if I had seen the lads, and implored me with tears to give them advice.

I tried all I could to recollect, but no! I had not seen the boys, and so the women went away distracted, and left me sorrowful--who would not be so at a woman's tears, a mother's too? But suddenly, when toiling in the middle of a very difficult piece of rock-work, lowering the boat, I remembered having seen those boys, so I ran over the fields after the anxious mamma and soon a.s.sured her the children had been safe an hour ago, and their faithful servant with them, but that _he_ had become the fisherman, and they, like boys, had got tired of the rod, and were playing with a goat.

When the poor mother heard we had seen the little fellows and they were safe, her tears of joy were quite affecting, and they vividly recalled one's schoolboy days, when the thoughtless playtime of childhood so often entails anxiety on a loving mother's heart.

Such, then, are the river sights and river wonders, ever new, though trifling perhaps when told, but far more lively and entertaining than the common incidents of a dusty road, or a whirring, shrieking train.

With a few wadings and b.u.mpings, and one or two "vannes," or weirs, we slipped along pleasantly until evening came. Still it was only a slow stream, and the towers of St. Nicholas, long visible on the horizon, seemed ever to move from side to side without being any nearer, so much does this river wind in its course. I paddled at my best pace, but the evening rapidly grew darker, until we overtook two French youths in a boat, the first occasion on which we had noticed Frenchmen rowing for exercise. They could not keep up with the canoe, so we had to leave them ingloriously aground on a bank, and yet too lazy to get out and help their boat over the difficulty.

Soon after I came to a great weir about fifteen feet in height, the deepest we had yet encountered, and half a sigh was heaved when it was evident that there was no escape from all the bother of getting out and gymnasticizing here after a long day's work. It was a matter of some time and trouble to get the boat over this weir in the dark; but what was far worse immediately followed, as I found myself in a maze of shallows, without light to see how to get through them. Whenever we stopped, too, for rest, there was only darkness, silence, and no motion--not even the excitement of a current to arouse. Finally, I had to wade and haul the boat along, and jump in and ferry myself over the pools, for nearly half a mile, until at length the "look-out" man of our starboard watch shouted, "A bridge and a house on the lee bow!" and a joyous cheer burst forth from the crew.

All this, which may be told in a few sentences, took a full hour of very tiresome work, though, as there was no current, there was no danger, and it was merely tedious, wet, unlighted, and uncomfortable. Nevertheless I sang and whistled all the time.

When the bridge was arrived at, I was sure it must be a town, and then there happened a scene almost an exact counterpart of that which took place at Gegglingen, on the Danube.

I pulled up my boat on the dark sh.o.r.e, and, all dripping wet, I mounted to the house above, and speedily aroused the inmates. A window opened, and a worthy couple appeared in their night-dresses, holding a candle to examine the intruder. The tableau was most comical. The man asked, "Is it a farce?" He could scarcely expect a traveller from England to arrive there at such an hour. But he soon helped me to carry the boat to a little Restaurant, where a dozen men were drinking, who rushed out with lamps to look at the boat, but entirely omitted to help the forlorn captain.

Nor was there any room in this Restaurant, so we had to carry the boat through the dark streets to another house, where another lot of topers received me in like style. We put the Rob Roy into a garden here, and her sails flapped next morning while a crowd gazed over the walls with anxious curiosity. The worthy husband who had thus left his spouse that he might carry my wet boat, all slippery with mud, was highly pleased with a five-franc piece, which was the least I thought him to deserve, though it was like a five-pound note to him in such a cheap country.

Next morning in the light of day we had a survey of the scene of last night's adventure. It was very amusing to trace the various channels we had groped about in the darkness.

Here I met a French gentleman, of gay and pleasant manner, but who bemoaned his lot as Secretary of a great factory in this outlandish place, instead of being in joyous, thoughtless, brilliant Paris, where, he said, often for days together he did not sleep in bed, but ran one night into the next by b.a.l.l.s, theatres, and supper parties.

He kindly took me to see the great salt works, that send refined salt all over Europe. This rock salt is hoisted out of a deep mine, in blocks like those of coal, having been hewn from the strata below, which are pierced by long and lofty galleries. Then it is covered in tanks by water, which becomes saturated, and is conducted to flat evaporating pans, when the water is expelled by the heat of great furnaces, and the salt appears in ma.s.ses like snow-drift. Salt that is sold by weight they judiciously wet again, and other qualities sold by measure they cleverly deposit in crooked crystals, so as to take up as much s.p.a.ce as possible!

We found a ca.n.a.l here, and as the river was so shallow I mounted to the artificial channel, and with a strong and fair wind was soon sailing along rapidly. This ca.n.a.l has plenty of traffic upon it, and only a few locks; so it was by no means tedious. They asked for my card of permission, but I smiled the matter off as before. However, an officer of the ca.n.a.l who was walking alongside looked much more seriously at the infringement of rules, and when we came to a lock he insisted we must produce the "carte." As a last resort, I showed him the well-worn sketch-book, and then he at once gave in. In fact, after he had laughed at the culprit's caricatures, how could he gravely sentence him to penalties?

It is wonderful how a few lines of drawing will please these outlying country people. Sometimes we gave a small sketch to a man when it was desirable to get rid of him: he was sure to take it away to show outside, and when he returned I had departed. Once we gave a little girl a portrait of her brother, and next morning she brought it again all crumpled up. Her mother said the child had held it all night in her hand.

CHAPTER XIV.

Ladies in muslin--Officers shouting--Volunteers'

umbrella--Reims--Leaks--Wet--Madame Clicquot--Heavy blow--Dinner talk--The Elephant--Cloud.

The ca.n.a.l brought me to Nancy, a fine old town, with an archbishop, a field-marshal, a good hotel, large washhand basins, drums, bugles, ices, and all the other luxuries of life. In the cathedral there was more tawdry show about the Ma.s.s than I ever remarked before, even in Italy.

At least thirty celebrants acted in the performance, and the bowings and turnings and grimaces of sedate old men clad in gorgeous, dirty needlework, fumbling with trifles and muttering Latin, really pa.s.sed all bounds: they were an insult to the population, who are required to attend this vicarious worship, and to accept such absurdities as the true interpretation of "This do in remembrance of Me."

A large and attentive congregation, nearly all women, listened first to an eloquent sermon from a young priest who glorified an old saint. It is possible that the ancient worthy was a most respectable monk, but probably he was, when he lived, a good deal like the monks one meets in the monasteries, and now that I have lived pretty frequently with these gentlemen I must say it makes one smile to think of canonizing such people, as if any one of them had unapproachable excellence; but perhaps this monk distinguished himself by proper daily ablutions, and so earned the rare reputation of being reasonably clean.

In the afternoon the relics of the monk were borne through the streets by a procession of some thousand women and a few men. These ladies, some hundreds of whom were dressed in white muslin, and in two single ranks, chanted as they slowly marched, and all the bystanders took off their hats, but I really could not see what adoration was due to the mouldering bones of a withered friar, so my excellent straw hat was kept on my head.

But the French, who live in public, must have a public religion, a gregarious worship, with demonstrative action and colours and sounds.

Deep devotion, silent in its depth, is for the north and not for this radiant sun, though you will find that quiet worship again in lower lat.i.tudes where the very heat precludes activity.

Some twenty years ago, one of the ablest men of the University of Cambridge read a paper on the influence which the insular position and the climate of Britain has upon our national character, and it appeared to be proved clearly that this influence pervades every feature of our life.

In a third-rate French town like Nancy, nearly all the pleasant _agrements_ depend on the climate, and would be sadly curtailed by rain or snow. So, again, when a Frenchman visits England and gets laughed at for mistakes in our difficult language, and has to eat only two dishes for dinner, and drinks bad coffee, and has no evening lounge in the open air, and is then told to look at our domestic life, and finds he cannot get an entrance there (for how very few French do enter there), his miseries are directly caused by our climate, and no wonder his impression of Albion is that we are all fog and cotton and smoke, and everything _triste_.

From Nancy we sent the canoe by rail to meet me on the river Marne, and while the slow luggage-train lumbered along I took the opportunity of visiting the celebrated Camp of Chalons, the Aldershot of France. An omnibus takes you from the railway station, and you soon enter a long straggling street of very little houses, built badly, and looking as if one and all could be pushed down by your hand. These are not the military quarters, but the self-grown parasite sutlers' town, which springs up near every camp. Here is "Place Solferino," and there "Rue Malakhoff," where the sign of the inn is a Chinaman having his pigtail lopped off by a Francais. The camp is in the middle of a very large plain, with plenty of dust and white earth, which "glared" on my eyes intensely, this being the hottest day I have experienced during the vacation. But there are trees for shade, and a good deal of gra.s.s on these extensive downs where great armies can manoeuvre and march past the Emperor as he sits enthroned under a bower on that hill-crest overlooking all.

The permanent buildings for the troops consist of about 500 separate houses, substantial, airy, and well lighted, all built of brick, and slated, and kept in good repair; each of these is about seventy feet long, twenty broad, and of one story high. A million and a-half pounds sterling have already been expended on this camp. Behind the quarters are the soldiers' gardens, a feature added lately to the camps in England. There were only a few thousand soldiers at the place, so we soon saw all that was interesting, and then adjourned to a Restaurant, where I observed about twenty officers go in a body to breakfast. This they did in a separate room, but their loud, coa.r.s.e, and outrageously violent conversation really amazed me. The din was monstrous and without intermission. We had never before fallen in with so very bad a specimen of French manners, and I cannot help thinking there may have been special reasons for these men bellowing for half an hour as they ate their breakfast.

The "mess system" has been tried in the French army several times, but it seems to fail always, as the French Clubs do, on the whole. It is not wise, however, for a traveller to generalize too rapidly upon the character of any portion of a great people if he has not lived long among them. A hasty glance may discern that a stranger has a long nose, but you must have better acquaintance with him before you can truly describe the character of your friend. In a little book just published in France about the English Bar two facts are noted, that Barristers put the name of their "Inn" on their visiting cards, and that the Temple Volunteers are drilled admirably by a Serjeant-at-Law, who wields "an umbrella with a varnished cover, which glances in the sun like a sword"!

Another interesting town in this department of France is Rheims (spelt Reims, and p.r.o.nounced very nearly Rens). Having still an hour or two free, I went there, and enjoyed the visit to the very splendid cathedral. It is one of the finest in Europe, very old, very large, very rich, and celebrated as the place of coronation for the French sovereigns. Besides all this it is kept in good order, and is remarkably clean. The outside is covered with stone figures, most of them rude in art, but giving at a distance an appearance of prodigal richness of material. A little periodical called _France Ill.u.s.trated_ is published at fourpence each number, with a map of the Department, several woodcuts of notable places or events, and a brief history of the princ.i.p.al towns, concluding with a _resume_ of the statistics of the Department. A publication of this kind would, I think, be very useful in England; and for travellers especially, who could purchase at the County town the particular number or part then required.

In one of the adjoining Departments, according to this publication, it appears that there are about a hundred suicides in the year among a population of half a million. Surely this is an alarming proportion; and what should we say if Manchester had to report 100 men and women in one year who put themselves to death?

But we are subsiding, you see, into the ordinary tales of a traveller, because I am waiting now for the train and the Rob Roy, and certainly this my only experience of widowerhood made me long again for the well-known yellow oaken side of the boat and her pink-brown cedar varnished top.

Well, next morning here is the canoe at Epernay, arrived all safe at a cost of 2_s._ 6_d._ All safe we thought at first, but we soon found it had been sadly bruised, and would surely leak. I turned it upside down on the railway platform in the hot sun, and bought two candles and occupied three good hours in making repairs and greasing all the seams.

But after all this trouble, when we put the boat into the Marne, the water oozed in all round.

It is humiliating to sit in a leaky boat--it is like a lame horse or a crooked gun; of all the needful qualities of a boat the first is to keep out the water. So I stopped at the first village, and got a man to mix white lead and other things, and we carefully worked this into all the seams, leaving it to harden while I had my breakfast in the little auberge close by the sh.o.r.e, where they are making the long rafts to go down to Paris, and where hot farmers come to sip their two-penny bottle of wine.

The raft man was wonderfully proud of his performance with the canoe, and he called out to each of his friends as they walked past, to give them its long history in short words. When I paid him at last, he said he hoped I would never forget that the canoe had been thoroughly mended in the middle of France, at the village of ----, but I really do not remember the name.