EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY WATER TRAVEL
natural. The service had been highly organized for generations, and guide-books published elaborate "Directions to know at what times the post-waggons, draw-boats, passage-vessels, or sailing-boats, and market-boats, set out from Amsterdam to the principal towns in the Low Countries, according to their alphabetical order."[1] Nugent's account, which follows, enables us to see precisely what we should have had to do:—
"The usual way of travelling in Holland, and most parts of the United Provinces as well as in a great many provinces of the Austrian and French Netherlands, is in Treckscoots, or Draw-boats, which are large covered boats not unlike the barges of the livery companies of London, drawn by a horse at the rate of three miles an hour; the fare of which does not amount to a penny a mile; and you have the conveniency of carrying a portmanteau, or provisions; so that you need not be at any manner of expence at a public house by the way. The rate of places in these boats, as also in their post-waggons, is fixed; therefore there is no occasion for contending about the price. The carriage of one's baggage must be paid apart, for which there does not seem to be any settled price, but is left to the discretion of the skipper or boatman, who judges generally according as his thick scull and avaricious heart directs him; for which reason you must agree upon a price for the carriage of your goods before you put them in, or you will be obliged to give him whatever he pleases to ask. …
"There is scarce a town in Holland but one may travel to in this manner every day; and if it be a considerable place, almost every hour, at the ringing of a bell; but they will not stay a moment afterwards for a passenger, tho' they see him coming."[2]
Another account of the canal boats by a contemporary writer completes the picture, with very little repetition:—
"These passage-boats, or treck schuyts, as they are called in the language of the country, go at the rate of four miles an hour, stopping only about half a quarter of an hour at certain villages, to give the passenger an opportunity of
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- ↑ Nugent, Grand Tour, i, 315. These directions fill the last fifty-eight pages of volume i. Compare also the following: "Directions to know at what time the post-waggons, coaches, draw-boats, sailing-boats, and market-boats set out from all the principal towns of the Low Countries, especially of the United Provinces, to the following towns and places; according to the alphabetical order." Ibid., i, 334–67.
- ↑ Ibid., i, 48, 49.
