EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY WATER TRAVEL
in France, we forded the river Var, with the help of some guides, and entered the king of Sardinia's dominions." On account of the depth of the river, which is full of shifting holes, "the guides are therefore obliged to wade naked up to their waists on each side of the carriage, feeling their way with poles. If any person be lost, the guides are hanged without mercy; yet their pay, as fixed by government, is very low, three-pence for each passage. All travellers, who have the least spark of generosity, give them much more."[1]
Ferries[2] in some districts were a perpetual annoyance. Tourists often complained of being entrapped into a bargain for transportation that did not include the ferry charges, which were easily made greater for strangers ignorant of the usual rates.[3] De Brosses found the numerous ferries between Bologna and Venice very expensive and particularly annoying because of the delay they occasioned.[4]
As elsewhere observed, eighteenth-century tourists appear hardly to have discovered the Italian lakes, or at all events to have made little effort to see them. The celebrated Borromean Isles in Lake Maggiore drew admiring travelers, but the lakes in general were regarded merely as an easy means of transportation.
IV
Germany
In Germany there were three chief rivers of service to the tourist, — the Rhine, the Danube, and the Elbe. In the eighteenth century, as indeed for centuries before, the Rhine offered the most convenient route between the north and the south of Germany. So indispensable was it that from ancient days the authorities on both sides of the river exacted high tolls from all boatmen for the privilege of passing.[5] Before the eighteenth century the boatmen in their turn exacted labor from their passengers. Coryate tells us that even those who had paid their passage were com-
37
- ↑ Smith, Tour on the Continent, i, 211, 212.
- ↑ Wright illustrates the ingenious device (still often found in Germany) used in crossing the Po near Borgo Porte. At a point in the middle of the stream a strong chain or cable was fastened, the other end being attached to the ferry-boat, which by the force of the current was swung from one bank to the other at the pleasure of the steersman. See Some Observations made in Travelling through France, Italy, etc., i, 33, 34.
- ↑ Bromley, Several Years' Travels, p. 205; Starke, Letters from Italy, ii, 363.
- ↑ Lettres sur l'Italie, i, 312.
- ↑ Between Cologne and Amsterdam "there are no less than twelve of those oppressors." Cogan, The Rhine, i, 308.
