A Thousand Miles in the Rob Roy Canoe on Rivers and Lakes of Europe Part 9

A number of their mammas came out to smile on the performance, and some asked to have a pa.s.sage to England in the boat, to which there was the stock reply, given day by day, "Not much room for the crinoline." Only once was there the rejoinder, that the lady would willingly leave her expansion at home; though on another occasion (and that in France, too) they answered, "We poor folks don't wear crinoline."

In every group there were various forms of inquisitiveness about the canoe. First, those who examined it without putting questions; and then those who questioned about it without examining. Some lifted it to feel the weight; others pa.s.sed their hands along its smooth deck to feel the polished cedar; others looked underneath to see if there was a keel, or bent the rope to feel how flexible it was, or poised the paddle (when I let them), and said, "How light!" and then more critical inquirers measured the boat's dimensions, tapped its sides with their knuckles, and looked wise; sketched its form, scrutinized its copper nails, or gently touched the silken flag, with its frayed hem and colour fading now; in all places this last item, as an object of interest, was always the first exclaimed about by the lady portion of the crowd.

It is with such little but pleasant trivialities that a traveller's day may be filled in this enchanting atmosphere where simply to exist, to breathe, to gaze, and to listen, are enough to pa.s.s the sunny hours, if not to engage the n.o.bler powers of the mind.

The Lakes of Zurich and Zug are not far separate. About three hours of steady road walking takes you from one to the other, over a high neck of forest land, and a hot walk this was from twelve to three o'clock, in the brightest hours of the day. The heat and the dust made me eager again to be afloat. By the map, indeed, it seemed as if one could row part of this way on a river which runs into Zug, but maps are no guidance as to the fitness of streams for a boat. They make a black line wriggling about on the paper do for all rivers alike, and this tells you nothing as to the depth or force of the current, nor can the drivers or innkeepers tell much more, since they have no particular reason for observing how a river comports itself; their business is on the road.

The driver was proud of his unusual fare, a boat with an English flag, and he gave a short account of it to every friend he met, an account no doubt frightfully exaggerated, but always accepted as sufficient by the gratified listener. The worthy carter, however, was quite annoyed that I stopped him outside the town of Zug (paying thirteen francs for the cart), for I wished to get the canoe into the water un.o.bserved, as the morning's work had left me yet no rest, and sweet repose could best be had by floating in my boat. However, there was no evading the townspeople's desire to see "the schiff in a cart from England." We took her behind a clump of stones, but they climbed upon the stones and stood. I sat down in a moody silence, but they sat down too in respectful patience. I tried then another plan, turned the canoe bottom upward, and began lining a seam of the planks with red putty. They looked on till it was done, and I began the same seam again, and told them that all the other seams must be thus lined. This, at last, was too much for some of the wiser ones, who turned away and murmured about my slowness, but others at once took their places in the front row. It seemed unfriendly to go on thus any longer, and as it was cooler now, I pushed the boat into the lake, shipped my luggage on board, and after the usual English speech to them all from the water, bid every one "adieu."[XIX.]

[XIX.] This word, like other expressive French words, is commonly used in Germany and Switzerland.

New vigour came when once the paddle was grasped again, and the soft yielding water and gentle heaving on its bosom had fresh pleasure now after the dusty road. It seems as if one must be for ever spoiled for land travel by this smooth liquid journeying.

Zug is a little lake, and the mountains are over it only at one end, but then there are glorious hills, the Rigi and a hundred more, each behind another, or raising a peak in the gaps between. I must resolutely abstain from describing these here. The sight of them is well known to the traveller. The painted pictures of them in every shop window are faithful enough for those who have not been nearer, and words can tell very little to others of what is seen and felt when you fill the delighted eye by looking on the snowy range.

Near one end of the lake I visited the line of targets where the Switzers were popping away their little bullets at their short ranges, with all sorts of gimcrack instruments to aid them, lenses, crooks, and straps for the arms, hair-triggers, and everything done under cover too.

Very skilful indeed are they in the use of these contrivances; but the weapons look like toy-guns after all, and are only one step removed from the crossbows you see in Belgium and France, where men meet to shoot at stuffed c.o.c.krobins fixed on a pole, and do not hit them, and then adjourn for beer.

The Swiss are good shots and brave men, and woe be to their invaders.

Still, in this matter of rifle shooting their _dilettanti_ practice through a window, at the short range of 200 yards, seems really childish when compared with that of the manly groups at Wimbledon, where, on the open heath, in sun or drifting hail, the burly Yorkshireman meets with the hardy Scot, and sends his heavier deadly bullet on its swift errand right away for a thousand yards in the storm.

Leaving the shooters to their bulls' eyes, I paddled in front of the town to scan the hotels, and to judge of the best by appearances. Out came the boats of Zug to examine the floating stranger. They went round and round, in a criticising mood, just as local dogs strut slowly in circles about a new-come cur who is not known to their street, and besides is of ambiguous breed. These boats were all larger than mine, and most of them were brighter with plenty of paint, and universally they were enc.u.mbered with most awkward oars.

A courteous Frenchman in one of the boats told me all the Zug news in a breath, besides asking numerous questions, and giving a hasty commentary on the fishing in the lake. Finally, he pointed out the best hotel, and so the naval squadron advanced to the pier, led by the canoe. A gracious landlady here put my boat safe in the hotel coachhouse, and offered to give me the key of the padlock, to make sure. In the _salle a manger_ were some English friends from London, so now I felt that here was an end of lone wanderings among foreigners, for the summer stream of tourists from England was encountered at this point.

An early start next morning found the mists on the mountains, but they were quickly furled up out of the way in festoons like muslin curtains.

We skirted the pretty villas on the verge of the lake, and hauled in by some apple-trees to rig up the sails. This could be done more easily when the boat was drawn ash.o.r.e than when it was afloat; though, after practice, I could not only set the mast and hoist the sails "at sea,"

but could even stand up and change my coat, or tie the flag on the masthead, or survey a difficult channel, while the boat was rocking on the waves of a rapid.[XX.]

[XX.] This is so very useful in extending the horizon of view, and in enabling you to examine a whole ledge of sunken rocks at once, that it is well worth the trouble of a week or two's practice.

Sailing on a lake in Switzerland is a full reward for carrying your mast and sails unused for many a long mile. Sometimes, indeed, the sails seemed to be after all an enc.u.mbrance, but this was when they were not available. Every time they came into use again the satisfaction of having brought them was rea.s.sured.

In sailing while the wind is light you need not always sit, as must be done for paddling. Wafted by the breeze you can now recline, lie down, or lie up, put your legs anyhow and anywhere, in the water if you like, and the peak of the sail is a shade between the sun and your eyes, while the ripples seem to tinkle cheerfully against the bow, and the wavelets seethe by smoothly near the stern. When you are under sail the hill tops look higher than before, for now you see how far they are above your "lofty" masthead, and the black rocks on the sh.o.r.e look blacker when seen in contrast with a sail like cream.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Sailing on Lake Zug."]

After a cruise that left nothing more to see of Zug, we put into port at Imyn, and though it is a little place, only a few houses, the boys there were as troublesome as gnats buzzing about; so the canoe had to be locked in the stable out of sight.

Three Britons were waiting here for the steamer. They had come to fish in Switzerland. Now fishing and travelling kill each other, so far as my experience goes, unless one of them is used as a _pa.s.setemps_ because you cannot go on with the other. Thus I recollect once at the town of Vossevangen, in Norway, when we had to wait some hours for horses, it was capital fun to catch three trout with a pin for a hook fastened on the lash of a gig-whip, while a fellow-traveller shot with a pistol at my Glengarry cap on a stone.

The true fisherman fishes for the fishing, not for the fishes. He himself is pleased even if he catches nothing, though he is more pleased to bring back a full basket, for that will justify him to his friends.

Now when you stop your travelling that you may angle, if you catch nothing you grudge the day spent, and keep thinking how much you might have seen in it on the road. On the other hand, if you do happen to catch one or two fish, you don't like to leave the place where more might be taken, and your first ten miles after departure from it is a stage of reflection about pools, stones, bites, and rises, instead of what is going on all around. Worst of all, if you have hooked a fish and lost him, it is a sad confession of defeat then to give up the sport and moodily resume the tour.

As for the three visitors at Imyn, they had just twenty minutes sure, so they breakfasted in five minutes, and in the next three minutes had got their rods ready, and were out in the garden casting as fast as possible, and flogging the water as if the fish also ought to be in a hurry to get taken. The hot sun blazed upon the bald head of one of these excited anglers, for he had not time to put on his hat. The other had got his line entangled in a bush, and of course was _hors de combat_. The third was a sort of light skirmisher, rushing about with advice, and pointing out shoals of minnows everywhere else but where his companions were engaged. However, they managed to capture a few monsters of the deep, that is to say, a couple of misguided gudgeons, probably dissipated members of their tribe, and late risers, who had missed their proper breakfasts. Ardent as I am with the rod I could not enjoy fishing after this sort.

To be in this tide of wandering Britons, and yet to look at them and listen to them as if you were distinct--this is a post full of interest and amus.e.m.e.nt; and if you can, even for one day, try to be (at least in thought) a Swiss resident or a Parisian, and so to regard the English around you from the point they are seen from by the foreigners whom they visit, the examination becomes far more curious. But this has been done by many clever tourists, who have written their notes with more or less humour, and with more rather than less severity; so I shall not attempt to a.n.a.lyse the strange atoms of the flood from our islands which overflows the Continent every year.

It is the fashion to decry three-fourths of this motley company as "sn.o.bs," "spendthrifts," or "greenhorns." With humble but firm voice I protest against this unfairness; nor can I help thinking that much of the hard criticism published by travellers against their fellows is a crooked way of saying, what it does not do to a.s.sert directly, that the writer has at any rate met some travellers inferior to himself.

Of course, among the Englishmen whom I met now and then in the course of this voyage there were some strange specimens, and their remarks were odd enough, when alluding to the canoe. One said, for example, "Don't you think it would have been more commodious to have had an attendant with you to look after your luggage and things?" The most obvious answer to this was probably that which I gave, "Not for me, if he was to be in the boat; and not for him, if he had to run on the bank."

Another Englishman at home asked me in all seriousness about the canoe voyage, "Was it not a great waste of time?" And when I inquired how _he_ had spent his vacation, he said, "Oh, I was all the time _at Brighton_!"

In returning once more to English conversation, one is reminded how very useless and unpractical are all the "Talk-books" published to facilitate the traveller's conversation in foreign languages. Whether they are meant to help you in French, German, Italian, or Spanish, these little books, with their well-known double columns of words and phrases, and their "Polite Letter-writer" at the end, all seem to be equally determined to force words upon you which you never will need to use; while the things you are always wanting to say in the new tongue are either carefully buried among colloquies on botany or precious stones, or among philosophical discussions about metaphysics, or else the desirable phrases are not in the book at all.

This need of a brief and good "Talk-book" struck me particularly when I had carefully marked in my German one all the pages which would never be required in the tour, so that I could cut them out as an unnecessary addition to the weight of my ship's library. Why, the little book, when thus expurgated, got so lamentably thin that the few pages left of it, as just possible to be useful, formed only a wretched skeleton of the original volume.

Another fault of these books is that half the matter in them is made up of what the imaginary chatting foreigner says _to you_, the unhappy Englishman, and this often in long phrases, or even in set speeches.

But when, in actual life, the real foreigner speaks to you, he somehow says quite a different set of words from any particular phrases you see in the book, and you cannot make out his meaning, because it does not correspond with anything you have learned.

It is evident that a dictionary is required to get at the English meaning of what is said to you by another; while a talk-book will suffice for what you wish to say to him; because you can select in it and compose from it before you utter any particular phrase.

The Danish phrase-book for Norway and Sweden is a tolerably good one, and it holds in a short compa.s.s all the traveller wants; but I think a book of this kind for each of the other princ.i.p.al languages might well be constructed on the following basis.

First, let us have the expression "I want," and then the English substantives most used in travel talk, arranged in alphabetical order, and with their foreign equivalents. Next, put the request "Will you,"

and after it place each of the verbs of action generally required by travellers. Then set forth the question, "Does the," with a column of events formed by a noun, verb, and preposition in each, such as "coach stop at," "road lead to," "steamer start from," &c.; and, lastly, give us the comprehensive "Is it," with a long alphabetical list of adjectives likely to be employed. Under these four heads, with two pages of adverbs and numerals, I think that the primary communications with a foreigner can be comprised; and as for conversations with him on special subjects, such as politics, or art, or scenery, these are practically not likely to be attempted unless you learn his language, and not merely some of its most necessary _words_; but this study of language is not the purpose for which you get a talk-book.

Having now delivered a homily on international talking, it is time to be on the move again.

CHAPTER VIII.

Sailing on Lucerne--Seeburg--River scenes--Night and snow--The Reuss--A dear dinner--Seeing a rope--Pa.s.sing a fall--Bremgarten rapids.

When the steamer at Imyn had embarked the three sportsmen, and the little pier was quiet, we got a cart out for the Rob Roy, and bargained to have it rumbled over the hill to the Lake of Lucerne for the sum of five francs--it is only half-an-hour's walk. The landlord himself came as driver, for he was fully interested about the canoe, and he did not omit to let people know his sentiments on the subject all along the way, even calling out to the men plucking fruit in the apple-trees, who had perhaps failed to notice the phenomenon which was pa.s.sing on the road beneath them. There was a permanent joke on such occasions, and, oddly enough, it was used by the drivers in Germany as well as in Switzerland, and was of course original and spontaneous with each of them as they called out, "Going to America!" and then chuckled at the brilliant remark.

The village we came to on Lucerne was the well-known Kussnacht, that is, _one_ of the well-known Kussnachts, for there are plenty of these honeymoon towns in Central Europe; and with the customary a.s.sembly of _quidnuncs_, eloquently addressed this time by the landlord-driver, the canoe was launched on another lake, perhaps the prettiest lake in the world.

Like other people, and at other times, I had traversed this beautiful water of the Four Cantons, but those only who have seen it well by steamer and by walking, so as to know how it juts in and winds round in intricate geography, can imagine how much better you may follow and grasp its beauties by searching them out alone and in a canoe.

For thus I could penetrate all the wooded nooks, and dwell on each view-point, and visit the rocky islets, and wait long, longer--as long as I pleased before some lofty berg, while the ground-swell gently undulated, and the pa.s.sing cloud shaded the hill with grey, and the red flag of a steamer fluttered in a distant sunbeam, and the plash of a barge's oar broke on the boatman's song; everything around changing just a little, and the stream of inward thought and admiration changing too as it flowed, but, all the time, and when the eye came back to it again, there was the grand mountain still the same,

"Like Teneriffe or Atlas unremoved."

How cool the snow looked up there aloft even in the heat of summer! and, to come down again to one's level on the water, how lively the steamer was with the music of its band and the quick beat of its wheels curling up white foam. Let us speed to meet it and to get a tossing in the swell, while Jones and Smith, under the awning, cry out, "Why, to be sure, that's the Rob Roy canoe," and Mrs. Jones and the three Miss Smiths all lift up their heads from their "Murrays," where they have been diligently reading the history of Switzerland from A.D. 1682, and then the description in words of all the scenery around, although they have suffered its speaking realities in mountain, wood, and lake to pa.s.s unnoticed.

As I was quite fresh (having worked chiefly the sails on Zug) and now in good "training," so as to get on very comfortably with ten or twelve hours' rowing in the day, I spent it all in seeing this inexhaustible Lake of Lucerne, and yet felt that at least a dozen new pictures had been left unseen in this rich volume of the book of nature.

But as this book had no page in it about quarters for the night it was time to consider these homely affairs, and to look out for an hotel; not one of the big barracks for Englishmen spoken of before, but some quiet place where one could stop for Sunday. Coming suddenly then round a shady point, behold the very place! But can it be an hotel? Yes, there is the name, "Seeburg." Is it quiet? Observe the shady walks. Bathing?

Why, there is a bath in the lake at the end of the garden. Fishing? At least four rods are stretched over the reeds by hopeful hands, and with earnest looks behind, watching for the faintest nibble.

Let us run boldly in. Ten minutes, and the boat is safely in a shed, and its captain well housed in an excellent room; and, having ordered dinner, it was delicious to jump into the lake for a swim, all hot with the hot day's work, and to stretch away out to the deep, and circle round and round in these limpid waters, with a nice little bath-room to come back to, and fresh dry clothes to put on. In the evening we had very pretty English music, a family party improvised in an hour, and broken up for a moonlight walk, while, all this time (one fancied), in the big hotel of the town the guests were in stiff _coteries_, or each set retired to its sitting-room, and lamenting how unsociable everybody else had become.