The Grand Tour in the Eighteenth Century/Chapter 3

by William Edward Mead

CHAPTER III

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY WATER TRAVEL

I

The English Channel

The real troubles of the tourist began with the crossing of the English Channel.^[1] Even now, in luxurious steamers that make the run in less than an hour, the experience is for many no unmixed delight. But a century and a half ago, when the vessels were small, dirty, and ill-appointed, the passage was a torment, and, if strong head-winds blew, impossible. Some travelers went all the way by water from London to the Continent. "Upon Change every day is to be met with the master of a French trader; whose price to Calais, Dunkirk, or Boulogne is only a guinea each passenger: the passage is commonly made in sixteen or twenty hours: this scheme is much more commendable than going to Dover; where, should you chance to be wind-bound, it will cost you at least half a guinea a day."^[2]

Several routes were open to the traveler from England to the Continent. He might go from Harwich to the Briel in Holland by packet boat,^[3] from Yarmouth to Cuxhaven, from London to Hamburg, from Brighton to Dieppe, from Dover to Calais or Boulogne, and so on. By landing at Boulogne one saved some miles of travel by coach on the way to Paris. A sailing vessel left London every week for Amsterdam, from which place there was also a return service.^[4]

But the ordinary route to the Continent by way of Dover and Calais was the shortest and most popular. Yet, if we may trust the genial Smollett, the trip by coach to Dover was not entirely agreeable, though possibly not much worse than the trip to other seaports. "I need not tell you this is the worst road in England, with respect to the conveniences of travelling, and must certainly impress foreigners with an unfavorable opinion of the nation in general. The chambers are in general cold and comfortless, the beds paultry, the cookery execrable, the wine poison, the attendance bad, the publicans insolent, and the bills extortion;^[5] there is not a drop of tolerable malt liquor to be had from London to Dover."^[6]

When the winds permitted, regular packet boats carrying mail and passengers left Dover for Calais on Tuesdays and Fridays of every week, and Calais for Dover on Wednesdays and Saturdays.^[7] Besides these there were three or four barques belonging to private owners in Dover or Calais in which passage, including transportation of luggage, could be had for ten or twelve livres a person.^[8] The exclusive use of a small vessel cost about five guineas.^[9]

Before the introduction of steam vessels travelers were entirely at the mercy of the winds, and might be delayed on land for many days. In the sixteenth century, says Bates, "a forty-eight hour passage was nothing to grumble at."^[10] Coryate, on his famous journey, went from Dover to Calais in ten hours. His characteristic description would apply in some particulars to a crossing even in our day. "I arrived," says he, "about five of the clocke in the after-noone, after I had varnished the exterior parts of the ship with the excrementall ebullitions of my tumultuous stomach, as desiring to satiate the gormandizing paunches of the hungry Haddocks … with that wherewith I had superfluously stuffed my selfe at land, having made my rumbling belly their capacious aumbrie."^[11]

In the eighteenth century five hours or more was an ordinary allowance for a crossing in a fair wind,^[12] though the run was often made in three hours, or even less.^[13] In 1754, the Earl of Cork and Orrery crossed from Dover to Calais in three hours and ten minutes.^[14] In 1772, Dr. Charles Burney spent nine days at Calais in waiting for weather that would permit him to cross the Channel. When he finally arrived at London he suffered a severe attack of

A FRENCH PORT

illness owing to the discomforts of his journey.^[15] James Essex, in August of 1773, counted four hours and a half as a good passage.^[16] Arthur Young spent fourteen hours between Dover and Calais.^[17] Birkbeck, in 1814, took only three hours to go from Boulogne to Dover — an exceedingly good record.^[18]

Landing at Calais or Boulogne when the tide was low can have been no special pleasure, for in that case ships had to ride at anchor outside and passengers were obliged to go ashore in small open boats — if they could. Says Major Ferrier, who in 1687 landed at Calais: We "could not by reason of y^e lowness of y^e water either goe into harbour with our ship or goe ashore at seaside with y^e boat."^[19]

Smollett and his family could not enter the harbor of Boulogne except in an open boat, as there was a wind blowing offshore. "When I objected to the trouble of shifting from one boat to another in the open sea, which (by the bye) was a little rough; he (the captain) said it was a privilege which the watermen of Boulogne had, to carry all passengers ashore, and that this privilege he durst not venture to infringe." The transfer of Smollett and his family was made to an open French boat half full of water, and the party was then rowed a league to the harbor. "From our landing place we were obliged to walk very near a mile to the inn where we purposed to lodge, attended by six or seven men and women, bare-legged, carrying our baggage. This boat cost me a guinea, besides paying exorbitantly the people who carried our things."^[20]

When Carr arrived at Cherbourg "men and boys, half naked, and in wooden shoes, … began … to seize upon every trunk within their reach, which they threw into their boats lying alongside."^[21] And when one had landed, there was the unpleasant possibility of being "so late as to be shut out of the town and compelled to lodge in one of the houses that stand without it."^[22]

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.^[23] 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."^[24] For going from Rouen to Paris by boat one allowed thirty-six hours.^[25]

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.^[26] 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.^[27] 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 shattered and sunk by striking the piers while attempting to shoot the arches. To avoid the risk, passengers often went ashore at this point. Says Smollett, "The boats that go up the river are drawn against the stream by oxen, which swim through one of the arches of this bridge, the driver sitting between the horns of the foremost beast."^[28]

The Rhone boats were very comfortable, having decks high enough to walk under. Some were drawn by horses and some floated with the current. From Lyons to Avignon the diligence par eau, drifting with the current, required three days to cover forty-eight leagues and cost eight livres.^[29]

 

III

Italy

The barrier of the Alps constrained many tourists to enter Italy by sea. Smollett followed this plan, and in his forcible way he gives his reasons: "Rome is betwixt four and five hundred miles distant from Nice, and one half of the way I was resolved to travel by water. Indeed there is no other way of going from thence to Genoa, unless you take a mule, and clamber along the mountains at the rate of two miles an hour, and at the risque of breaking your neck every minute."^[30]

The felucca used in going from Nice to Genoa was an "open boat, rowed by ten or twelve stout mariners," and "large enough to take in a post-chaise." Over the stem sheets where the passengers sat was a tilt to protect them from the rain. The boat crept along the windings of the shore and stretched out the distance from ninety to one hundred and twenty miles. For the passage one paid about a louis d'or.^[31] His journey to Genoa safely accomplished, Smollett got letters of credit there for Florence and Rome and hired the same boat to go as far as Lerici.^[32]

Some years earlier than Smollett, the traveler Northall made the same trip in the reverse direction. At Lerici, says he, "We went on board a felucca with ten oars, and embarked with the courier for Genoa. We paid a zechin^[33] 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,"^[34] twenty leagues from Lerici. Thence he continued to Villafranca "in a small boat with oars and sails."^[35]

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."^[36]

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.^[37] "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."^[38]

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.^[39]

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.^[40] Ray, who made the journey in the seventeenth century, describes the journey to Venice in detail: "Taking the Florentine Procaccio's boat to Venice, we passed through nine sostegni or locks to Mal Albergo, where we shifted our boat, going from a higher to a lower channel, which brought us to Ferrara, forty-five miles distant from Bologna. From Ferrara we were tow'd by a horse through an artificial channel as far as Ponte, where ent'ring the river Po, we chang'd our boat again and were row'd down the stream twenty-seven miles to Corbola, where ent'ring the Venetian territories we were obliged once more to change in order to take a Venetian boat."^[41]

James Edward Smith, who traveled in the same region more than a century later, found the accommodations on this route still sufficiently primitive: "This evening (May 8), about ten o'clock, we went on board the boat of the courier for Venice, paying thirty pauls each, not quite fifteen shillings, to be landed there free of all other expense, and fed by the way. … After a confused kind of supper which our good captain endeavoured to make as comfortable as possible, an arrangement of mattresses took place … and the company were laid, or rather piled upon them, over chests, bales, and everything that could be thought of."^[42]

Mariana Starke at the end of the eighteenth century went from Ferrara to Mestre by carriage and by gondola to Venice. But she recommends invalids "to embark at Francolino, which is five miles from Ferrara, and go all the way to Venice by water, a voyage of eighty miles up the Po, the Adige, the Brenta, and the Lagoons, which is usually performed in about twenty hours. Carriages, however, must at all events go over land; but, as the road is extremely bad, they go best empty."^[43]

One water journey was celebrated, and that was the passage of the Brenta in going from Padua to Venice, a distance of about twenty-five miles. On both sides of the stream rose the palaces of the Venetian nobility, "built with so great a variety of architecture that there is not one of them like another."^[44] Of the richness and beauty of these palatial villas and their grounds tourists could not say enough,^[45] for the eighteenth-century traveler was a devoted admirer of closely kept hedges and formal gardens laid out in geometrical lines. One sensible Englishman, however, at the opening of the nineteenth century considerably modified the enthusiastic eulogies of his predecessors. "These banks," says he, "have without a doubt a rich, a lively, and sometimes a splendid appearance; but their splendour and beauty have been much exaggerated, or are much faded; and an Englishman accustomed to the Thames, and to the villas which grace its banks, will discover little to excite his admiration, as he descends, the canal of the Brenta."^[46]

The ordinary traveler made the trip on the Brenta in about eight hours^[47] in a burchio or burcello, which with its mirrors and carpets and glass doors was a sufficiently luxurious conveyance. "The Burcello is a large handsome boat; the middle part of which is a pretty room, generally adorn'd with carving, gilding, and painting. 'T is drawn down the Brenta with one horse to Fusino, the entrance into the Lagune; and from thence to Venice 'tis hawl'd along by another boat, which they call a Remulcio, with four or six rowers."^[48]

Exclusive travelers "of a certain rank" hired a boat for their own use. This would commonly hold twenty persons or more and "with every expense included" cost "an English company about thirty-five shillings."^[49]

Besides these considerable journeys on the water there was frequent occasion to cross streams, small or large, and the lack of bridges necessitated fording or the use of ferries. The fording of small watercourses was so common in hilly districts as ordinarily to excite no comment, but the traveler occasionally jotted in his notebook a comment on the gullying of mountain roads after heavy rains and the flooding of the lowlands in the spring. A river fed by glaciers might always be expected to give the traveler some difficulty. The following was an ordinary incident of travel : "After a slight examination at St. Laurent, the last town 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."^[50]

Ferries^[51] 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.^[52] De Brosses found the numerous ferries between Bologna and Venice very expensive and particularly annoying because of the delay they occasioned.^[53]

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.^[54] 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 compelled to take their turn at the oar. On arriving at Oberwinter, says he, "We solaced ourselves, after our tedious labour of rowing, as merrily as we could."^[55] This excellent form of exercise gradually ceased to be compulsory. For ascending the river horses were employed, as indeed they had been in Coryate's day. Cogan gives a view of Bonn with a vessel of two or three hundred tons drawn by three horses in single file going up the Rhine.^[56] For larger craft, when heavily loaded, the number of horses was increased to ten or even twenty.' In shallow places such vessels had to use lighters. Says Cogan,^[57] "When the water is low and the wind is against them, they are some months in making their passage."

With such cargo-boats the ordinary tourist^[58] had little to do, for he could find ample accommodation in vessels designed expressly for passenger traffic. "These are of various sizes, according to the number of passengers to be accommodated. Those most commonly in use have an oblong cabin built in the centre, that will contain tenor twelve persons very commodiously; between this and the helm are benches with a canvas stretched upon hoops by way of canopy, which forms a second compartment for a lower class of passengers. The boatman is attended with one or two servants. The passage is just as you make your agreement. … We hired our boat for thirteen shillings English, giving the man, however, permission to take in two or three other passengers that wished to go with him."^[59]

The swift current of the Rhine so aided the descent that the charge for going from Mainz to Cologne was much less than for going from Cologne to Mainz. Multitudes of craft simply floated downstream, aided a little, perhaps, by a sail and kept by the rudder or an occasional dip of the great sweeps from striking the shore or some other obstruction.

Transport on the Danube or the Elbe was much the same as on the Rhine, except that not infrequently the accommodations were more primitive. One traveler who went down the Danube in 1792 recorded in his journal, "The seventh day of my being immured in a sty."^[60] Travelers in general complain that the boats are small and dirty and over-crowded. Yet even at worst the boats were hardly inferior to the conveyances on land. The luxurious Lady Mary Montagu, who in 1716 descended the Danube from Regensburg to Vienna, found the "journey perfectly agreeable." She went "in one of those little vessels, that they very properly call wooden houses, having in them all the conveniences of a palace, stoves in the chambers, kitchens, etc. They are rowed by twelve men each, and move with such incredible swiftness, that in the same day you have the pleasure of a vast variety of prospects."^[61] She obviously had a boat of the highest type.

In 1798, Mariana Starke found very good accommodations in going from Dresden to Hamburg by the Elbe. "Hearing that the road was execrably bad, and that the inns were very indifferent, we determined to dismiss our mules, and go by water, in an excellent boat, with three cabins, four beds, a place behind for men-servants, and another before for baggage." The voyage, says she, is "usually accomplished in less than a week; even though you cast anchor for a few hours every night, in order to avoid the noise which the Boatmen constantly make while going on."^[62]

The trip down the Elbe from Hamburg to Cuxhaven, in boats containing beds for five or six persons and a fireplace for cooking, took eighteen hours for about sixty miles. For the boat and the three watermen the charge was seventy marks. Four marks were added as a gratuity. The passengers found provisions for themselves, but not for the watermen.^[63]

 

V

Holland and Belgium

In the eighteenth century, as in our day, the Low Countries were a network of waterways, artificial and 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."^[64] 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."^[65]

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

ON A DUTCH CANAL IN WINTER

stretching himself, and taking a little refreshment in the inns. The fare is about three farthings a mile. …

"The boat is drawn by a horse, and contains about twenty or five and twenty passengers. It is very clean, with a deck over it which covers them from rain, etc., so that they are as much at ease as in their own houses. They talk, read, sew, knit, as each likes best; and do not know they are going by water, except they look out, and see they are moving, the motion is so insensible. … The boat has windows on the sides to let in the air; from which also the passengers may see the country as they travel. The boat goes off every hour of the day, on the ringing of a little bell;^[66] so that one knows to a minute when he is to set out, and to a few minutes, when he shall arrive at his journey's end. Strangers are equally surprised and charmed with this way of travelling, as it is indeed far the most commodious, best regulated, and cheapest in Europe."^[67]

To a modern reader the speed does not seem excessive,^[68] but the boats compared favorably even in speed with the ordinary wheeled conveyances in many parts of Europe. In other particulars the comfort of the boats was incomparably greater than that of the post-wagon or the coach. Travelers grow enthusiastic over the delights of water travel in Holland and Flanders and declare that "the convenience and pleasure of it can hardly be conceived from description."^[69] Misson, about a century earlier, had remarked on these boats: "You are seated as quietly in them as if you were at home, and sheltered both from rain and wind: so that you may go from one country to another, almost without perceiving that you are out of the house."^[70]

One treck-scoot in particular, plying daily between Ghent and Bruges through a canal thirty miles long, was called "the most remarkable boat of the kind in all Europe; for it is a perfect tavern divided into several appartments, with a very good ordinary at dinner of six or seven dishes, and all sorts of wines at moderate prices. In winter they have fires in their chimneys, and the motion of the vessel is so gentle that a person is all the way as if he were in a house."^[71]

Even minor towns were well served. Note a single instance: "The boat that passes between Brussels and Villebroeck is extremely commodious: the passengers may be accommodated with meat and drink."^[72]

For going from Amsterdam to Antwerp and Brussels three or four gentlemen accompanied by ladies might hire a yacht at Rotterdam for from seven to ten guilders a day and see the country with entire independence. They could take servants with them to cook their food and look after the baggage; they could sleep in good beds on the boat, and be more comfortable than at an inn. "If they have a mind, they may stop by the way to see Dort or Bergen-op-Zoom, or some of the towns of Zealand."^[73] The chief inconvenience from this sort of travel arose in hot weather, when the nearly stagnant water in the canals became covered with green scum and exhaled a noisome stench.

1. The Gentleman's Guide in his Tour through France (1770), pp. 14ff.
2. Ibid., p. 14.
3. Nugent, Grand Tour, I, 338.
4. Ibid., I, 326.
5. "The Ship inn upon the quay at Dover is the best and most reasonable house." The Gentleman's Guide, p. 15.
6. Travels through France and Italy, I, 3, 4.
7. These were, at all events, the ordinary days in the middle of the eighteenth century.
8. De la Force, Nouvelle Description de la France, I, 341.
9. Fitzgerald, Life of Sterne, p. 329.
10. Bates, Touring in 1600, p. 63.
11. Crudities, I, 152.
12. Journal of Major Richard Ferrier (1687), p. 17; Wright, Some Observations made in Travelling through France, Italy, etc. (1719–20), I, 1.
13. H. St. John writes from Paris to Selwyn, December 22, 1770, "I arrived here at five o'clock in the morning, last Sunday; had a fine passage of less than three hours." Jesse, George Selwyn and his Contemporaries, III, 3.
14. Letters from Italy, p. 10.
15. Dictionary of National Biography, s.v. Burney.
16. Journal of a Tour, etc., p. 3.
17. Travels in France, p. 150.
18. Notes on a Journey through France, p. 114.
19. Journal of Major Richard Ferrier, p. 17.
20. Smollett, Travels, 1, 11, 12. It was notorious that one often paid as much for being rowed ashore as for the whole passage. See The Gentleman's Guide, p. 16.
21. The Stranger in France, p. 21.
22. In (Jones) Journey to Paris, i, 8.
23. Thierry, Almanach du Voyageur, p. 107.
24. Travels through France, in Harris's Collection of Voyages and Travels, ii, 734.
25. The Gentleman's Guide, p. 47.
26. 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.
27. Nugent, Grand Tour, iv, 145.
28. Travels, i, 146.
29. The Gentleman's Guide, p. 144.
30. Travels, ii, 3.
31. Ibid., ii, 5, 6. Smith (Tour on the Continent, i, 215) went by felucca along the coast "on account of the badness of the roads and the danger of banditti" (p. 473).
32. Travels, ii, 33.
33. About $2.25.
34. Travels through Italy, p. 457.
35. Ibid., p. 473.
36. Wright, Some Observations made in Travelling through France, Italy, etc., i, 18.
37. 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.
38. Nugent, Grand Tour, iii, 377, 378.
39. See Chapter VIII.
40. De La Lande, Voyage en Italie, vii, 439.
41. Ray, Travels through the State of Venice, etc., in Harris's Collection of Voyages and Travels, ii, 683.
42. Tour on the Continent, ii, 374, 380.
43. Letters from Italy, ii, 195.
44. Burnet, Travels, p. 105.
45. Cf. for example, Breval, Remarks on Several Parts of Europe, i, 206, 207.
46. Eustace, Classical Tour in Italy, i, 161. To Smith the banks suggest Holland. Tour on the Continent, iii, 2.
47. Keysler, Travels, iv, 1. In Coryate's time the trip from Padua through the Brenta to Venice and return, a journey of fifty miles in all, required about twenty-four hours. Crudities, i, 300.
48. Wright, Some Observations made in Travelling through France, Italy, etc., i, 43.
49. Sharp, Letters from Italy, p. 6.
50. Smith, Tour on the Continent, i, 211, 212.
51. 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.
52. Bromley, Several Years' Travels, p. 205; Starke, Letters from Italy, ii, 363.
53. Lettres sur l'Italie, i, 312.
54. Between Cologne and Amsterdam "there are no less than twelve of those oppressors." Cogan, The Rhine, i, 308.
55. Crudities, ii, 307.
56. Cogan, The Rhine, i, 11.
57. Ibid., i, 308.
58. "In the great boats, which are drawn by horses, the common rate (from Cologne to Mainz) is a crown a-piece, a little over or under; and if the passengers please, they may land at any town by the way, to dine or sup." Misson, New Voyage to Italy, i², 495
59. Cogan, The Rhine, ii, 275.
60. Tour through Germany, p. 195.
61. Letters, i, 206.
62. Letters from Italy, ii, 249, 250.
63. Ibid., ii, 254.
64. 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.
65. Ibid., i, 48, 49.
66. The same is noted in Bromley's Several Years' Travels, (1702), p. 280.
67. A Description of Holland, pp. 349–50, note.
68. In Misson's time the journey by canal from Brussels to Antwerp required seven hours; from Bruges to Ostend, three hours. See New Voyage to Italy, ii², 531, 550.
69. Smith, Tour on the Continent, i, 6.
70. Smith, Tour on the Continent, i, 6.
71. Nugent, Grand Tour, i, 279.
72. Misson, New Voyage to Italy, i², 582.
73. Nugent, Grand Tour, i, 202.