A Thousand Miles in the Rob Roy Canoe on Rivers and Lakes of Europe. John MacgregorЧитать онлайн книгу.
sound, mellowed by the patter of the water-wheel. Further on, where tourists' scenery stops, it is a grand, dark-coloured ocean of hills. The houses get larger and larger, and fewer and fewer, and nearly every one has a little chapel built alongside, with a wooden saint's image of life-size nailed on the gable end. One night I was in one of these huge domiciles, when all the servants and ploughboys came in, and half said, half sung, their prayers, in a whining but yet musical tone, and then retired for a hearty supper.
Our carriage mounted still among crags, that bowed from each side to meet across the narrow gorge, and were crested on high by the grand trees that will be felled and floated down the Rhine on one of those huge rafts you meet at Strasbourg. But everybody must have seen a Rhine raft, so I need not describe it, with its acres of wood and its street of cabin dwellings, and its gay bannerets. A large raft needs 500 men to navigate it, and the timber will sell for 30,000l.
At the top of this pass was the watershed of this first chain of hills, where my English friends took leave of me. The Rob Roy was safely housed in the Baar Inn, and I set off for a long walk to find if the tiny stream there would possibly be navigable.
Alone on a hillside in a foreign land, and with an evening sun on the wild mountains, the playful breeze and the bleating sheep around you—there is a certain sense of independent delight that possesses the mind then with a buoyant gladness; but how can I explain it in words, unless you have felt this sort of pleasure?
However, the rivulet was found to be eminently unsuited for a canoe; so now let me go to bed in my wooden room, where the washingbasin is oval, and the partitions are so thin that one hears all the noises of the place at midnight. Now, the long-drawn snore of the landlord; then, the tittle-tattle of the servants not asleep yet—a pussy's plaintive mew, and the scraping of a mouse; the cows breathing in soft slumber; and, again, the sharp rattle of a horse's chain.
The elaborate construction of that edifice of housewifery called a "bett" here, and which we are expected to sleep upon, can only be understood when you have to undermine and dismantle it night after night to arrive at a reasonable flat surface on which to recline.
First you take off a great fluff bag, at least two feet thick, then a counterpane, and then a brilliant scarlet blanket; next you extract one enormous pillow, another enormous pillow, and a huge wedge-shaped bolster—all, it appears, requisite for the Teutonic race, who yet could surely put themselves to sleep at an angle of forty-five degrees, without all this trouble, by merely tilting up the end of a flat bedstead.
Simple but real courtesy have I found throughout. Every one says "Gut tag;" and, even in a hotel, on getting up from breakfast a guest who has not spoken a word will wish "Gut morgen" as he departs, and perhaps "Bon appetit" to those not satisfied like himself. About eight o'clock the light repast of tea or coffee, bread, butter, and honey begins the day; at noon is "mittagessen," the mid-day meal, leaving all proper excuse for another dining operation in the shape of a supper at seven.
No fine manners here! My driver sat down to dinner with me, and the waiter along with him, smoking a cigar between whiles, as he waited on us both. But all this is just as one sees in Canada and in Norway, and wherever there are mountains, woods, and torrent streams, with a sparse population; and, as in Norway too, you see at once that all can read, and they do read. There is more reading in one day in a common house in Germany than in a month in the same sort of place in France.
I had hired the cart and driver by the day, but he by no means admired my first directions next morning—namely, to take the boat off the main road, so as to get to the Titisee, a pretty mountain lake about four miles long, and surrounded by wooded knolls. His arguments and objections were evidently superficial, and something deeper than he said was in his mind. In fact, it appears that, by a superstition long cherished there, Pontius Pilate is supposed to be in that deep, still lake, and dark rumours were told that he would surely drag me down if I ventured upon it.[V.]
Of course, this decided the matter, and when I launched the Rob Roy from the pebbly shore in a fine foggy morning, and in full view of the inhabitants of the region (eight in number at last census), we had a most pleasant paddle for several miles.
At a distance the boat was invisible being so low in the water, and they said that "only a man was seen, whirling a paddle about his head."
There is nothing interesting about this lake, except that it is 3,000 feet above the sea and very lonely, in the middle of the Black Forest. Certainly no English boat has been there before, and probably no other will visit the deserted water.
After this, the Rob Roy is carted again still further into the forests. Lumbering vehicles meet us, all carrying wood. Some have joined three carts together, and have eight horses. Others have a bullock or two besides, and all the men are intelligent enough, for they stop and stare, and my driver deigns to tell them, in a patois wholly beyond me, as to what a strange fare he has got with a boat and no other luggage. However, they invariably conclude that the canoe is being carried about for sale, and it could have been well sold frequently already.
About mid-day my sage driver began to mutter something at intervals, but I could only make out from his gestures and glances that it had to do with a storm overhead. The mixture of English, French, and German on the borders of the Rhine accustoms one to hear odd words. "Shall have you pottyto?" says a waiter, and he is asking if you will have potatoes. Another hands you a dish, saying, it is "sweetbone," and you must know it is "sweetbread."
Yes, the storm came, and as it seldom does come except in such places. I once heard a thunder peal while standing on the crater of Mount Vesuvius, and I have seen the bright lightning, in cold and grand beauty, playing on the Falls of Niagara in a sombre night, but the vividness of the flashes to-day in the Black Forest, and the crashing, rolling, and booming of the terrible and majestic battery of heaven was astounding. Once a bolt fell so near and with such a blaze that the horse albeit tired enough started off down a hill and made me quite nervous lest he should overturn the cart and injure my precious boat, which naturally was more and more dear to me as it was longer my sole companion.
As we toiled up the Rothenhaus Pass, down came the rain, whistling and rushing through the cold, dark forests of larch, and blackening the top of great Feldberg, the highest mountain here, and then pouring heavy and fast on the cart and horse, the man, the canoe, and myself. This was the last rain my boat got in the tour. All other days I spent in her were perfectly dry.
People stared out of their windows to see a cart and a boat in this heavy shower—what! a boat, up here in the hills? Where can it be going, and whose is it? Then they ran out to us, and forced the driver to harangue, and he tried to satisfy their curiosity, but his explanation never seemed to be quite exhaustive, for they turned homeward shaking their heads and looking grave, even though I nodded and laughed at them through the bars of the cart, lifting up my head among the wet straw.
The weather dried up its tears at last, and the sun glittered on the road, still sparkling with its rivulets of rain, but the boat was soon dried by a sponge, while a smart walk warmed its well-soaked captain.
The horse too had got into a cheerful vein and actually trotted with excitement, for now it was down hill, and bright sun—a welcome change in ten minutes from our labouring up a steep forest road in a thunder-storm.
The most rigid teetotaller (I am only a temperance man) would probably allow that just a very small glass of kirchwasser might be prescribed at this moment with advantage, and as there was no "faculty" there but myself, I administered the dose medicinally to the driver and to his employer, and gave a bran-mash and a rub down to the horse, which made all three of us better satisfied with ourselves and each other, and so we jogged on again.
By dusk I marched into Donaueschingen, and on crossing the little bridge, saw at once I could begin the Danube from its very source, for there was at least three inches of water in the middle of the stream.
In five minutes a crowd assembled round the boat, even before it could be loosened from the cart.[VI.]
The ordinary idlers came first, then the more shy townspeople, and then a number of strange folk, whose exact position I could not make out, until it was explained that the