A Thousand Miles in the Rob Roy Canoe on Rivers and Lakes of Europe Part 18

However, there were not wanting tests of his workmanship, for the Rob Roy had to be pulled over many d.y.k.es and barriers on the Marne. Some of these were of a peculiar construction, and were evidently novel in design.

A "barrage" reached across the stream, and there were three steps or falls on it, with a plateau between each. The water ran over these steps, and was sometimes only a few inches in depth on the crest of each fall, where it had to descend some eight or ten inches at most.

This, of course, would have been easy enough for the canoe to pa.s.s, but then a line of iron posts was ranged along each plateau, and chains were tied from the top of one post to the bottom of another, diagonally, and it will be understood that this was a very puzzling arrangement to steer through in a fast current.

In cases of this sort I usually got ash.o.r.e to reconnoitre, and having calculated the angle at which we must enter the pa.s.sage obliquely (down a fall, and across its stream), I managed to get successfully through several of these strange barriers. We came at length to one which, on examination, I had to acknowledge was "impa.s.sable," for the chains were slack, and there was only an inch or two of "law" on either side of the difficult course through them.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "The Chain Barrier."]

However, a man happened to see my movements and the canoe, and soon he called some dozen of his fellow navvies from their work to look at the navigator.

The captain was therefore incited by these spectators to try the pa.s.sage, and I mentally resolved at any rate to be cool and placid, however much discomfiture was to be endured. The boat was steered to the very best of my power, but the bow of the canoe swerved an inch in the swift oblique descent, and instantly it got locked in the chains, while I quietly got out (whistling an air in slow time), and then, in the water with all my clothes on, I steadily lifted the boat through the iron network and got into her, dripping wet, but trying to behave as if it were only the usual thing. The navvies cheered a long and loud bravo!

but I felt somewhat ashamed of having yielded to the desire for ignorant applause, and when finally round the next corner I got out and changed my wet things, a wiser and a sadder man, but dry.

This part of the river is in the heart of the champagne country, and all the softly swelling hills about are thickly covered by vineyards. The vine for champagne is exceedingly small, and grows round one stick, and the hillside looks just like a carding-brush, from the millions of these little sharp-pointed rods upright in the ground and close together, without any fence whatever between the innumerable lots. The grape for champagne is always red, and never white, so they said, though "white grapes are grown for eating." During the last two months few people have consumed more grapes in this manner than the chief mate of the Rob Roy canoe.

On one of these hills we noticed the house of Madame Clicquot, whose name has graced many a cork of champagne bottles and of bottles not champagne.

The vineyards of Ai, near Epernay, are the most celebrated for their wine. After the bottles are filled, they are placed neck downwards, and the sediment collects near the cork. Each bottle is then uncorked in this position, and the confined gas forces out a little of the wine with the sediment, while a skilful man dexterously replaces the cork when this sediment has been expelled. One would think that only a very skilful man can perform such a feat. When the bottles are stored in "caves," or vast cellars, the least change of temperature causes them to burst by hundreds. Sometimes one-fourth of the bottles explode in this manner, and it is said that the renowned Madame Clicquot lost 400,000 in the hot autumn of 1843, before sufficient ice could be fetched from Paris to cool her s.p.a.cious cellars. Every year about fifty million bottles of genuine champagne are made in France, and no one can say how many more millions of bottles of "French champagne" are imbibed every year by a confiding world.

The Marne is a large and deep river, and its waters are kept up by barriers every few miles. It is rather troublesome to pa.s.s these by taking the boat out and letting it down on the other side, and in crossing one of them I gave a serious blow to the stern of the canoe against an iron bar. This blow started four planks from the sternpost, and revealed to me also that the whole frame had suffered from the journey at night on an open truck. However, as my own ship's carpenter was on board, and had nails and screws, we soon managed to make all tight again, and by moonlight came to Dormans, where I got two men to carry the boat as usual to an hotel, and had the invariable run of visitors from that time until everybody went to bed.

It is curious to remark the different names by which the canoe has been called, and among these the following:--"_Batteau_," "_schiff_,"

"_bot_," "_barca_," "_canot_," "_caique_" (the soldiers who have been in the Crimea call it thus), "_chaloupe_" "_navire_," "_schipp_" (Low German), "_yacht_" ("jacht"--Danish, "jaht," from "jagen," to ride quickly--properly a boat drawn by horses). Several people have spoken of it as "_batteau a vapeur_," for in the centre of France they have never seen a steamboat, but the usual name with the common people is "_pet.i.t batteau_" and among the educated people "_nacelle_" or "_perissoir_;"

this last as we call a dangerous boat a "coffin" or "sudden death."

An early start next morning found me slipping along with a tolerable current and under sail before a fine fresh breeze, but with the same unalterable blue sky. I had several interesting conversations with farmers and others riding to market along the road which here skirts the river. What most surprises the Frenchman is that a traveller can possibly be happy alone! Not one hour have I had of _ennui_, and, however selfish it may seem, it is true that for this sort of journey I prefer to travel entirely _seul_.

Pleasant trees and pretty gardens are here on every side in plenty, but where are the houses of the gentlemen of France, and where are the French gentlemen themselves? This is a difference between France and England which cannot fail to "knock" the observant traveller (as Artemus Ward would say)--the notable absence of country seats during hours and hours of pa.s.sage along the best routes; whereas in England the prospect from almost every hill of woodland would have a great house at the end of its vista, and the environs of every town would stretch into outworks of villas smiling in the sun. The French have ways and fashions which are not ours, but their nation is large enough to ent.i.tle them to a standard of their own, just as the Americans, with so great a people agreed on the matter, may surely claim liberty to speak with a tw.a.n.g, and to write of a "plow."

I am convinced that it is a mistake to say we Britons are a silent people compared with the French or Americans. At some hundred sittings of the table d'hote in both these countries I have found more of dull, dead silence than in England at our inns. An Englishman accustomed only to the pleasant chat of a domestic dinner feels ill at ease when dining with strangers, and so he notices their silence all the more; but the French table d'hote (not in the big barrack hotels, for English tourists, we have before remarked upon) has as little general conversation, and an American one has far less than in England.

Here in France come six or seven middle-cla.s.s men to dine. They put the napkin kept for each from yesterday, and recognized by the knots they tied on it, up to their chins like the pinafore of a baby, and wipe plate, fork, and spoons with the other end, and eat bits and sc.r.a.ps of many dishes, and sc.r.a.pe their plates almost clean, and then depart, and not one word has been uttered.

Then, again, there is the vaunted French climate. Bright sun, no doubt, but forget not that it is so very bright as to compel all rooms to be darkened from ten to four each day. At noon the town is like a cemetery; no one thinks of walking, riding, or looking out of his window in the heat. From seven to nine in the morning, and from an hour before sunset to any time you please at night, the open air is delicious. But I venture to say that in a week of common summer weather we see more of the sun in England than in France, for we seldom have so much of it at once as to compel us to close our eyes against its fierce rays. In fact, the sensation of life in the South, after eleven o'clock in the morning, is that of _waiting for the cool hours_, and so day after day is a continual reaching forward to something about to come; whereas, an English day of sunshine is an enjoyable present from beginning to end.

Once more, let it be remembered that twilight lasts only for half an hour in the sunny South; that delicious season of musing and long shadows is a characteristic of the northern lat.i.tudes which very few Southerners have ever experienced at all.

The run down the Marne for about 200 miles was a pleasant part of the voyage, but seldom so exciting in adventure as the paddling on unknown waters. Long days of work could therefore be now well endured, for constant exercise had trained the body, and a sort of instinct was enough, when thus educated by experience, to direct the mind. Therefore the Rob Roy's paddle was in my hands for ten hours at a time without weariness, and sometimes even for twelve hours at a stretch.

After a comfortable night at Chateau Thierry in the Elephant Hotel, which is close to the water, I took my canoe down from the hayloft to which it had been hoisted, and once more launched her on the river. The current gradually increased, and the vineyards gave place to forest trees. See, there are the rafts, some of casks, lashed together with osiers, some of planks, others of hewn logs, and others of great rough trees. There is a straw hut on them for the captain's cabin, and the crew will have a stiff fortnight's work to drag, push, and steer this congeries of wood on its way to the Seine. The labour spent merely in adjusting and securing the parts is enormous, but labour of that kind costs little here.

Further on there is a large flock of sheep conducted to the river to drink, in the orthodox pastoral manner of picture-books. But (let us confess it) they were also driven by the sagacious shepherd's dogs, who seem to know perfectly that the woolly mult.i.tude has come precisely to drink, and, therefore, the dogs cleverly press forward each particular sheep, until it has got a place by the cool brink of the water.

In the next quiet bay a village maid drives her cow to the river, and chats across the water with another, also leading in a cow to wade knee deep, and to dip its broad nose, and lift it gently again from the cool stream. On the road alongside is a funny little waggon, and a whole family are within. This concern is actually drawn along by a goat. Its little kid skips about, for the time of toil has not yet come to the youngling, and it may gambol now.

But here is the bridge of Nogent, so I leave my boat in charge of an old man, and give positive pleasure to the cook at the auberge by ordering a breakfast. Saints' portraits adorn the walls, and a "sampler" worked by some little girl, with only twenty-five letters in the alphabet, for the "w" is as yet ignored in cla.s.sic grammars, though it has now to be constantly used in the common books and newspapers. Why, they even adopt our sporting terms, and you see in a paper that such a race was only "un Walkover," and that another was likely to be "un dead heat."

Suddenly in my quiet paddling here the sky was shaded, and on looking up amazed I found a cloud; at last, after six weeks of brilliant blue and scorching glare, one fold of the fleecy curtain has been drawn over the sun.

The immediate effect of this cooler sky was very invigorating, though, after weeks of hot glare (reflected upwards again into the face from the water), it seemed the most natural thing to be always in a blaze of light, for much of the inconvenience of it was avoided by a plan which will be found explained in the Appendix, with some other hints to "Boating Men."

The day went pleasantly now, and with only the events of ordinary times, which need not be recounted. The stream was steady, the banks were peopled, and many a blue-bloused countryman stopped to look at the canoe as she glided past, with the captain's socks and canvas shoes on the deck behind him, for this was his drying-place for wet clothes.

Now and then a pleasure-boat was seen, and there were several canoes at some of the towns, but all of them flat-bottomed and open, and desperately unsafe--well named "perissoirs." Some of these were made of metal. The use of this is well-known to be a great mistake for any boat under ten tons; in all such cases it is much heavier than wood of the same strength, considering the strains which a boat must expect to undergo.

"La Ferte sous Jouarre" is the long name of the next stopping-place.

There are several towns called by the name La Ferte (La Fortifie), which in some measure corresponds with the termination "caster" or "cester" of English names. Millstones are the great specialty of this La Ferte. A good millstone costs 50_l._, and there is a large exportation of them.

The material has the very convenient property of not requiring to be chipped into holes, as these exist in this stone naturally.

At La Ferte I put the boat into a hayloft; how often it has occupied this elevated lodgings amongst its various adventures; and at dinner with me there is an intelligent and hungry bourgeois from Paris, with his vulgar and hearty wife, and opposite to them the gossip of the town, who kept rattling on the stupid, endless fiddle-faddle of everybody's doings, sayings, failings, and earnings. Some amus.e.m.e.nt, however, resulted from the collision of two gossips at our table of four guests, for while the one always harped upon family tales of La Ferte, its local statistics, and the minute sayings of its people, the other kept struggling to turn our thoughts to shoes and slippers, for he was a commercial traveller with a cartful of boots to sell. But, after all, how much of our conversation in better life is only of the same kind, though about larger, or at any rate different things; what might sound trifles to our British Cabinet would be the loftiest politics of Honolulu.

When we started at eight o'clock next day I felt an unaccountable languor; my arms were tired, and my energy seemed, for the first time, deficient. This was the result of a week's hard exercise, and of a sudden change of wind to the south. Give me our English climate for real hard work to prosper in.

One generally a.s.sociates the north wind with cool and bracing air, and certainly in the Mediterranean it is the change of wind to the south, the hated _sirocce_, that enervates the traveller at once. But this north wind on the Marne came over a vast plain of arid land heated by two months of scorching sun, whereas the breezes of last week, though from the east, had been tempered in pa.s.sing over the mountains of the Vosges.

Forty-two miles lay before me to be accomplished before arriving to-night at my resting-place for Sunday, and it was not a pleasant prospect to contemplate with stiff muscles in the shoulders. However, after twelve miles I found that about twenty miles in turnings of the river could be cut off by putting the boat on a cart, and thus a league of walking and 3_s._ 4_d._ of payment solved the difficulty. The old man with his cart was interesting to talk to, and we spoke about those deep subjects which are of common interest to all.

At a turn in the road we came upon a cart overturned and with a little crowd round it, while the earth was covered with a great pool of what seemed to be blood, but was only wine. The cart had struck a tree, and the wine-cask on it instantly burst, which so frightened the horse that he overset the cart.

The Rob Roy was soon in the water again, and the scenery had now become much more enjoyable.

I found an old soldier at a ferry who fetched me a bottle of wine, and then he and his wife sat in their leaky, flat, green-painted boat, and became very great friends with the Englishman. He had been at the taking of Constantine in Algeria, a place which really does look quite impossible to be taken by storm. But the appearance of a fortress is deceptive except to the learned in such matters. Who would think that Comorn, in Hungary, is stronger than Constantine? When you get near Comorn there is nothing to see, and it is precisely because of this that it was able to resist so long.

The breeze soon freshened till I hoisted my sails and was fairly wafted on to Meaux, so that, after all, the day, begun with forebodings, became as easy and as pleasant as the rest.

CHAPTER XV.

Meaux on the Marne--Hammering--Popish forms--Wise dogs--Blocked in a tunnel--A dry voyage--Arbour and garret--Odd fellows--Dream on the Seine--Almost over--No admittance--Charing-cross.

There are three hemispheres of scenery visible to the traveller who voyages thus in a boat on the rivers. First, the great arch of sky, and land, and trees, and flowers down to the water's brink; then the whole of this reflected beautifully in the surface of the river; and then the wondrous depths in the water itself, with its animal life, its rocks and glades below, and its flowers and mosses. Now rises the moon so clear, and with the sky around it so black that no "man in the moon" can be seen.

At the hotel we find a whole party of guests for the marriage-dinner of a newly-wedded pair. The younger portion of the company adjourn to the garden and let off squibs and crackers, so it seems to be a good time to exhibit some of my signal lights from my bedroom-window, and there is much cheering as the Englishman illumines the whole neighbourhood. Next day the same people all a.s.sembled for the marriage breakfast, and sherry, madeira, and champagne flowed from the well-squeezed purse of the bride's happy father.

I have noticed that the last sound to give way to the stillness of the night in a village is that of the blacksmith's hammer, which is much more heard abroad than at home. Perhaps this is because much of their execrable French ironwork is made in each town; whereas in England it is manufactured by machinery in great quant.i.ties and at special places. At any rate, after travelling on the Continent long enough to become calm and observant, seeing, hearing, and, we may add, scenting all around, the picture in the mind is full of blue dresses, white stones, jingling of bells, and the "cling, cling" of the never idle blacksmith.

This town of Meaux has a bridge with houses on it, and great mill-wheels filling up the arches as they used to do in old London-bridge. Pleasant gardens front the river, and cafes glitter there at night. These are not luxuries but positive necessaries of life for the Frenchman, and it is their absence abroad which--we believe--is one chief cause of his being so bad a colonist, for the Frenchman has only the expression "with me"

for "home," and no word for "wife" but "woman."

The cathedral of Meaux is grand and old, and see how they masquerade the service in it! Look at the gaunt "Suisse," with his c.o.c.ked-hat kept on in church, with his sword and spear. The twenty priests and twelve red-surpliced boys intone to about as many hearers. A monk escorted through the church makes believe to sprinkle holy water on all sides from that dirty plasterer's brush, and then two boys carry on their shoulders a huge round loaf, the "pain benit," which, after fifty bowings, is blessed, and escorted back to be cut up, and is then given in morsels to the congregation. These endless ceremonies are the meshes of the net of Popery, and they are well woven to catch many Frenchmen, who must have action, show, the visible tangible outside, whatever may be meant by it.

This service sets one a-thinking. Some form there must be in worship.

One may suppose, indeed, that perfect spirit can adore G.o.d without att.i.tude, or even any sequence or change. Yet in the Bible we hear of Seraphs veiling their bodies with their wings, and of elders prostrate at certain times, and saints that have a litany even in heaven. Mortals must have some form of adoration, but there is the question, How much?

and on this great point how many wise and foolish men have written books without end, or scarcely any effect!

The riverside was a good place for a quiet Sunday walk. Here a flock of 300 sheep had come to drink, and nibble at the flowers hanging over the water, and the simple-hearted shepherd stood looking on while his dogs rushed backward and forward, yearning for some sheep to do wrong, that their dog service might be required to prevent or to punish naughty conduct. This "Berger" inquires whether England is near Africa, and how large our legs of mutton are, and if we have sheep-dogs, and are there any rivers in our island on the sea. Meanwhile at the hotel the marriage party kept on "breakfasting," even until four o'clock, and non-melodious songs were sung. The French, as a people, do not excel in vocal music, either in tone or in harmony, but then they are precise in time.