A Thousand Miles in the Rob Roy Canoe on Rivers and Lakes of Europe Part 8

"By an edict, dated April 6, 1866, issued this morning, the Ministre d'Etat inst.i.tutes a special committee for the organisation of a special exhibition, at the Exposition Universelle of 1867, of all objects connected with the arts and industry attached to pleasure boats and river navigation. This measure is thought to display the importance which amateur navigation has a.s.sumed during the last few years--to display the honour in which is held this _sport nouveau_, as it is denominated in the report, and to be successful in abolishing the old and absurd prejudices which have so long prevented its development in France. The Emperor, whose fancy for imitating everything English leads him to patronise with alacrity all imitation of English sports in particular, is said to have suggested the present exhibition after reading MacGregor's 'Cruise of the Rob Roy,' which developes many new ideas of the purposes besides mere pleasure to which pleasure boats may be applied, and would be glad to encourage a taste for the exploration of solitary streams and lonely currents amongst the youth of France."

However, as we were too late to breakfast with his Majesty, I pulled in at the village of Steckborn, where an inn is built on the actual edge of the water, a state of things most convenient for the aquatic tourist, and which you find often along this part of the Rhine. In a case of this sort you can tap at the door with the paddle, and order a repast before you debark, so that it is boiling and fizzing, and the table is all ready, while you put things to rights on board, and come leisurely ash.o.r.e, and then tie the boat to the window balcony, or, at any rate, in some place where it can be seen all the time you breakfast or dine, and rest, and read, and draw.

Experience proved that very few boys, even of the most mischievous species, will meddle with a boat which is floating, but that very few men, even of the most amiable order, will refrain from pulling it about when the little craft is left on sh.o.r.e.

To have your boat not only moored afloat but in your sight too,--that is perfection, and it is worth additional trouble to arrange this, because then and for hours of the midday stoppage, you will be wholly at ease, or at any rate, you will have one care the less, the weary resting traveller will not then be anxious about his absent boat, as if it were a valuable horse in a strange stable.

The landlord was much interested in the story of my voyage as depicted in the sketch-book, so he brought a friend to see me who could speak French, and who had himself constructed a boat of two tin tubes,[XVIII.] on which a stage or frame is supported, with a seat and rowlocks, the oddest looking thing in nautical existence. I persuaded him to put this inst.i.tution into the water, and we started for a cruise; the double-tube metal boat, with its spider-like gear aloft, and the oak canoe, so low and rakish, with its varnished cedar deck, and jaunty flag, now racing side by side, each of them a rare sight, but the two together quite unprecedented.

[XVIII.] Each of these was in shape like the cigar ship which I had sailed past on the Thames, and which has since been launched.

The river here is like parts of the Clyde and the Kyles of Bute, with French villages let in, and an Italian sky stretched overhead. We rowed across to a village where a number of Jews live, for I wished to visit their Synagogue; but, lo! this was the Grand Duchy of Baden land, and a heavily-armed sentry found us invading the dominion, so he deployed and formed square to force us to land somewhere else. The man was civil, but his orders were unreasonable, so we merely embarked again and went over to Switzerland, and ran our little fleet into a bramble bush, to hide it while we mounted to an auberge on the hill for a sixpenny bottle of wine.

The pretty Swiss la.s.s in charge said she once knew an Englishman--but "it was a pity they were all so proud." He had sent her a letter in English, which I asked her to let me read for her. It began, "My dear little girl, I love you;" and this did not sound so very proud for a beginning. My boating friend promised to make her a tin _cafetiere_, and so it may be divined that he was the tinman of the village, and a most agreeable tinman too.

She came to see us on board, and her father arrived just in time to witness a triangular parting, which must have puzzled him a good deal, Amelia waving farewell to a "proud" Englishman and a nautical whitesmith, who both took leave also of each other, the last sailing away with huge square yards and coloured canvas, and the Rob Roy drifting with the stream in the opposite direction.

Every day for weeks past had been as a picnic to me, but I prolonged this one into night, the air was so balmy and the red sun setting was so soon replaced by the white moon rising, and besides, the navigation here had no dangers, and there were villages every few miles.

When I had enough of it, cruising here and there by moonlight, I drew up to the town of Stein, but all was now lonely by the water-side. This is to be expected when you arrive late; however, a slap or two on the water with the paddle, and a loud verse of a song, Italian, Dutch, a pibroch, any noise in fact, soon draws the idlers to you, and it is precisely the idlers you want.

One of them readily helped me with the boat to an inn, where an excellent landlady greeted the strange guest. From this moment all was bustle there, and very much it was increased by a German guest, who insisted on talking to me in English, which I am sure I did not understand a bit better than the Germans who came to listen and look on.

CHAPTER VII.

Fog--Fancy pictures--Boy soldiers--Boat's billet--Eating--Lake Zurich--Crinoline--Hot walk--Staring--Lake Zug--Swiss shots--Fishing Britons--Talk-book.

In the morning there was a most curious change of air; all around was in a dense white fog. Truly it was now to be "sensation rowing;" so we hastened to get off into this milky atmosphere. I have an idea that we pa.s.sed under a bridge; at least the usual cheers sounded this time as if they were above me, but the mist was as thick as our best November Cheshire-cheese fogs, and quite as interesting. On several occasions I positively could not see the bow of my boat, only a few feet from my nose. The whole arrangement was so unexpected and entirely novel,--paddling on a fast invisible stream--that I had the liveliest emotions of pleasure without seeing anything at all.

But then fancy had free play all the time, and the pictures it drew were vivid and full of colour, and, after all, our impressions of external objects are only pictures, so say the philosophers; and why not then enjoy a tour in a fog, with a good alb.u.m of pictures making the while in the brain?

Sounds too there were, but like those of witches and fairies--though perhaps it was only the cackling of some antique washerwomen on the banks. However, I addressed the unseen company in both prose and poetry, and was full of emphasis, which now and again was increased by my boat running straight into the sh.o.r.e.

The clearing away of the fog was one of the most interesting evolutions of nature to be seen. In one sort or other every traveller has enjoyed the quick or gradual tearing up of a fog curtain on mountain or moor, but here it was on a beauteous river.

I wish to describe this process, but I cannot. It was a series of "Turner pictures," with glimpses right and left, and far overhead, of trees, sky, castles, each lightened and shown for a moment, and then gauzed over again and completely hidden; while the mind had to imagine all the context of the scenery, and it was sure to be quite wrong when another gleam of sun disclosed what was there in reality. For it cleared away at last, and Father Sol avenged himself by an extra hot ray, for thus trifling with his beams.

The Rhine banks here were sloping but steep, with pleasant meadows, vineyards, and woods, mingled with tolerable fairness to all three. In short, though I appreciate scenery with an eager admiration, any scenery seemed good when the genial exercise of the canoe was the medium for enjoying it.

Soon afterwards the woods thickened, the mountains rose behind them, the current got faster and faster, the houses, at first dotted on the knolls, got closer and more suburb like, and at last a grand sweep of the stream opened up Schaffhausen to the eye, while a sullen sound on the water warned of "rapids ahead." As I intended to keep them always in front, some caution was needed in steering, though there is no difficulty here, for steamboats navigate thus far, and of course it is easy for a canoe.

But when I glided down to the bridge there was the "Goldenen Schiff"

hotel, and I resolved to patronise it on account of its name, and because there was a gigantic picture of a Briton on the adjoining wall.

He was in full Highland costume, though the peculiar tartan of his kilt showed that there is still one clan we have not yet recognised.

Here began a novel kind of astonishment among the people; for when, on my arrival, they asked, "Where have you come from?" and were told, "From England," they could not understand how my course seemed as if in reality from Germany.

The short morning's work being soon over, there was all the day before me to wander about.

Drums and a band presently led me to a corps of little boys in full uniform, about 200 of them, all with real guns and with boy officers, most martial to behold, albeit they were munching apples between the words of command, and pulling wry faces at urchins of eight years old, who strove in vain to take long steps with short legs.

They had some skirmishing drill, and used small goats' horns to give the orders instead of bugles. These horns are used on the railways too, and the note is very clear, and may be heard well a long way off. Indeed I think much might be done in our drill at home by something of this sort.

It is a short three miles to the Belle Vue, built above the falls of Schaffhausen, and in full view of this n.o.ble scene. These great falls of the Rhine looked much finer than I had recollected them some twelve years before; it is pleasant, but unusual, for one's second visit to such sights to be more striking than the first. At night the river was splendidly illuminated by Bengal lights of different colours, and the effect of this on the tossing foam and rich full body of ever pouring water--or fire as it then seemed to be--was to present a spectacle of magical beauty and grandeur, well seen from the balcony of the hotel, by many travellers from various lands. On one side of me was a Russian, and a Brazilian on the other.

Next day, at the railway-station, I put the sharp bow of the Rob Roy in at the window of the "baggages" office, and asked for the "boat's ticket." The clerk did not seem at all surprised, for he knew I was an Englishman, and nothing is too odd, queer, mad in short, for Englishmen to do.

But the porters, guards, and engine-drivers made a good deal of talk before the canoe was safely stowed among the trunks in the van; and I now and then visited her there, just for company's sake, and to see that the sharp-cornered, iron-bound boxes of the American tourists had not broken holes in her oaken skin. One could not but survey, with some anxiety, the lumbering casks on the platform, waiting to be rolled in beside the canoe; and the fish baskets, iron bars, crates, and clumsy gear of all sorts, which at every stoppage is tumbled in or roughly shovelled out of the luggage-van of a train.

This care and sympathy for a mere boat may be called enthusiasm by those who have not felt the like towards inanimate objects linked to our pleasures or pains by hourly ties of interest; but others will understand how a friendship for the boat was felt more every day I journeyed with her: her strong points were better known as they were more tried, but the weak points, too, of the frail traveller became now more apparent, and the desire to bring her safely to England was rapidly increased when we had made the homeward turn.

The mere cost of the railway ticket for the boat's carriage to Zurich was two or three shillings,--not so much as the expense of taking it between the stations and the hotels.

Submitting, then, to be borne again on wheels and through tunnels in the good old railway style, we soon arrive among the regular Swiss mountains, and where gather the Swiss tourists, for whom arise the Swiss hotels, those huge establishments founded and managed so as best to fatten on the wandering Englishman, and to give him h.o.m.oeopathic feeding while his purse is bled.

For suffer me again to have a little gossip about _eating_. Yes, it is a mundane subject, and undoubtedly physical; but when the traveller has to move his body and baggage along a route by his own muscles, by climbing or by rowing, or by whipping a mule, it is a matter of high moment, to him at least, that fibrine should be easily procurable.

If you wish, then, to live well in Switzerland and Germany go to German hotels, and avoid the grand barracks reared on every view-point for the English tourist.

See how the omnibus, from the train or the steamer, pours down its victims into the landlords' arms. Papa and Mamma, and three daughters and a maid: well, of course _they_ will be attended to. Here is another timid lady with an alpenstock, a long white cane people get when they arrive in Switzerland, and which they never know what on earth to do with. Next there will issue from the same vehicle a dozen newly-fledged Londoners; and the whole party, men and women, are so demure, so afraid of themselves, that the hotel-keeper does just what he likes with them, every one.

Without a courier, a wife, heavy baggage, or young ladies, I enter too, and dare to order a cutlet and potatoes. After half-an-hour two chops come and spinach, each just one bite, and cold. I ask for fruit, and some pears are presented that grate on the knife, with a minute bunch of grapes, good ones let us acknowledge. For this we pay 2_s._

Next day I row three miles down the lake, and order, just as before, a cutlet, potatoes, and fruit, but this time at a second-rate German inn.

Presently behold two luscious veal cutlets, with splendid potatoes, and famous hot plates; and a fruit-basket teeming gracefully with large cl.u.s.ters of magnificent grapes, peaches, pears all gushing with juice, and mellow apples, and rosy plums. For this I pay 1_s._ 6_d._ The secret is that the Germans won't pay the prices which the English fear to grumble at, and won't put up with the articles the English fear to refuse.

Nor may we blame the hotel-keepers for their part in this business. They try to make as much money as they can, and most people who are making money try to do the same.

In the twilight the Rob Roy launched on the Lake of Zurich, so lovely by evening, cool and calm, with its pretty villages painted again on the water below, and soft voices singing, and slow music floating in the air, as the moon looked down, and the crests of snow were silvered on far-off hills.

The canoe was now put up in a boathouse where all seemed to be secure.

It was the only time I had found a boathouse for my boat, and the only time when she was badly treated; for, next morning, though the man in charge appeared to be a solid, honest fellow, I saw at once that the canoe had been sadly tumbled about and filled with water, the seat cast off and floating outside, the covering deranged, the sails untied, and the sacred paddle defiled by clumsy hands.

The man who suffered this to be perpetrated will not soon forget the Anglo-German-French set-down he received (with a half-franc), and I shall not forget in future to observe the time-honoured practice of carrying the canoe invariably into the hotel.

Another piece of experience gained here was this, that to send your luggage on by a steamer, intending to regain it on your arrival, adds far less of convenience than it does of anxiety and trouble, seeing that in this sort of travel you can readily take the baggage with you always and everywhere in your boat.

Much of the charm of next day's paddle on the lake consisted in its perfect independence of all previous arrangements, and in the absence of such thraldom as, "You must be here by ten o'clock;" or, "You have to sleep there at night." So now, let the wind blow as it likes, I could run before it, and breakfast at this village; or cross to that point to bathe; or row round that bay, and lunch on the other side of the lake, or anywhere else on the sh.o.r.e, or in the boat itself, as I pleased. I felt as a dog must feel on his travels who has no luggage and no collar, and has only one coat, which always fits him, and is always getting new.

When quite sated with the water, I fixed on Horgen to stop at for a rest, to the intense delight of all the Horgen boys. How they did jump and caper about the canoe, and scream with the glee of young hearts stirred by a new sight!

It was one of the great treats of this voyage to find it gave such hours of pleasure to the juvenile population in each place. Along the vista of my recollection as I think over the past days of this excursion, many thousand childish faces br.i.m.m.i.n.g with happiness range their chubby or not chubby cheeks.

These young friends were still more joyous when the boat was put into a cart, and the driver got up beside it, and the captain of the canoe began his hot walk behind.