EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY WATER TRAVEL
embarked with the courier for Genoa. We paid a zechin[1] each for our passage; and paid for our baggage besides. They rowed all night; and, at ten in the morning, we arrived at the city of Genoa,"[2] twenty leagues from Lerici. Thence he continued to Villafranca "in a small boat with oars and sails."[3]
The coasting trip was not always so easily accomplished. Wright wished to go from Marseilles to Leghorn, and this was his experience: "After having been detained at Marseilles a fortnight by contrary winds … I went on board a bark bound for Leghorn: we met with very bad weather; after six days labouring with wind and sea … we were glad at last to get ashore at St. Remo."[4]
The other most popular coasting trip was the run from Rome to Naples, which was inexpensive, and even in bad weather enabled the traveler to exchange one sort of discomfort for another.[5] "By water the passage is very pleasant in summer; this is generally performed in a felucca or small boat, which you hire at Rome or Ostia for eight pistoles, and keeping close to the shore, in order to have shelter in case of bad weather, you arrive at Naples in four and twenty hours, or at furthest in two days and two nights with a fair wind. Those who do not choose to hire a boat to themselves pay two crowns for their passage and four or five crowns for passage and board."[6]
One objection to travel on the Mediterranean was the danger, not wholly imaginary, of capture by Barbary pirates, who might be found lurking in some sheltered bay awaiting an opportunity to pounce upon an unprotected vessel.[7]
Once in the country the tourist in Italy found his chief opportunity for water travel in the great plain between the Apennines and the Alps. Here, where the roads were none too good, the tourist often saved trouble and expense by taking a water route. This was, indeed, the favorite way of going from Ferrara to Venice. Between Ferrara and Bologna one could go by post-route or by canal.[8] Ray, who made the journey in the seventeenth century, de-
34
- ↑ About $2.25.
- ↑ Travels through Italy, p. 457.
- ↑ Ibid., p. 473.
- ↑ Wright, Some Observations made in Travelling through France, Italy, etc., i, 18.
- ↑ Nugent very significantly says: "When the passage by land is easy, a curious traveller will never choose to go by sea." Grand Tour, iii, 41.
- ↑ Nugent, Grand Tour, iii, 377, 378.
- ↑ See Chapter VIII.
- ↑ De La Lande, Voyage en Italie, vii, 439.
