EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY WATER TRAVEL
II
France
In more than one country of Europe travel by water was the cheapest and easiest way to get about. Wherever possible, the rivers were utilized for transportation, and where there were none, canals often supplied the lack. The chief means of travel in France was of course some form of wheeled carriage. But the tourist had more than one opportunity to vary his journey by resorting to water transportation. From Paris he could take at eight in the morning the clumsy coche d'eau or galliot from the Pont-Royal down the Seine to Sèvres or Saint-Cloud.[1] He might even make his entrance to the capital by boat. Says Northleigh, "The barge which carries you from Fountainbleau down the river to Paris, being drawn by three or four horses, runs in ten or twelve hours, sixteen of their leagues, or about forty-eight English miles."[2] For going from Rouen to Paris by boat one allowed thirty-six hours.[3]
If the tourist happened to be at Toulouse, he could go to the Mediterranean by the Languedoc Canal, nearly one hundred and fifty miles long, the greatest work of the sort in Europe.[4] Besides the river Seine, the Loire, the Gironde, and other smaller streams each in their measure enabled tourists, as well as natives, to get from place to place with reasonable comfort and tolerable expedition. But the most famous water journey in France, and one that the traveler to Italy almost invariably took, was the trip down the Rhone. He might even take a "water carriage" from Paris to Lyons, paying thirty-five livres for his passage, and spending ten days upon the way.[5] He then embarked at Lyons in the coche d'eau and gliding "down the river with great velocity" arrived with little trouble or expense at Marseilles. For dinners and suppers he resorted to the ordinaries in the towns and villages on each side of the river. His chief anxiety was to get safely past the dangerous Pont Saint-Esprit, where more than one vessel was
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- ↑ Thierry, Almanach du Voyageur, p. 107.
- ↑ Travels through France, in Harris's Collection of Voyages and Travels, ii, 734.
- ↑ The Gentleman's Guide, p. 47.
- ↑ There were a half-score or more of canals in France before the Revolution, but the combined length of those open to commerce at the end of the eighteenth century was only about a thousand kilometers. Say, Dictionnaire des Finances.
- ↑ Nugent, Grand Tour, iv, 145.
