EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ROADS
built. Misson found the roads between Cologne and Mainz so bad that he went by the Rhine "notwithstanding the extreme slowness of the passage."[1] In speaking of the road between Augsburg and Munich he says: "The country is extremely rough for coaches, by the straight road; they are very apt to overturn, and the passengers are often constrain'd to alight, by reason of the continual ascending and descending among the mountains."[2] From Nuremberg the roads were "very bad and woody till you come towards Ingolstadt." "Our journey along the Rhine," says Breval, "thro' the extreme badness of the ways, tho' in the midst of Summer, took us up two whole days between Shaffhouse and Augst."[3]
In the same tenor Nugent cautions travelers: "The roads in general are very indifferent, which makes it downright misery to travel in bad weather."[4] Post-wagons, he says, do not make over eighteen miles a day. The fastidious Duke of Hamilton traveled in company with Dr. Moore, who wrote an account of their journeys. In going from Frankfort to Cassel they arrived at midnight of the second day. "As the ground is quite covered with snow, the roads bad, and the posts long, we were obliged to take six horses for each chaise, which, after all, in some places, moved no faster than a couple of hearses." Moore interjects a word of comment on "the phlegm and obstinacy of German postillions, of which one who has not travelled in the extremity of the winter, and when the roads are covered with snow, through this country, can form no idea."[5]
Another tourist says that ten hours were required to go the thirty-six miles from Limburg to Frankfort-on-the-Main.[6] As late as 1826 the Englishman Russell pronounced some portions of the road from Magdeburg to Berlin "the worst in Europe," — an "unceasing pull through loose dry sand, which rises to the very nave of the wheel."[7] The same conditions obtained about Hanover. "Scarcely out of the gates of Hanover, and the wheels already drowned in sand up to the axle-tree."[8]
The roads in Austria were, in some districts, better than
50
- ↑ New Voyage to Italy, i1, 87.
- ↑ Ibid., i2, 503.
- ↑ Breval, Remarks on Several Parts of Europe, ii, 69.
- ↑ Grand Tour, ii, 68.
- ↑ View of Society and Manners in France, Switzerland, and Germany, p. 231. A little later he adds (p. 246): "As soon as the roads were passable, we left Cassel, and arrived, not without difficulty and some risk, at Munden."
- ↑ Tour through Germany, pp. 73, 74.
- ↑ Tour in Germany, ii, 7.
- ↑ Ibid., ii, 1.
