Monts Faucilles, it crosses the Department Vosges, where, between
Bazeilles and Noncourt, it disappears and has a subterranean course
for three miles and a half. After crossing the Meuse and Ardennes
Departments, passing by the towns of Neufchâteau, Vaucouleurs, Commercy
St. Mihiel and Verdun, it reaches Sedan and enters Belgium. During
the rest of its course, its name is variously Meuse, Maes, Maas
and Merwede. Above Dinant it receives the Lesse and at Namur, its
largest tributary, the Sambre, which almost doubles its volume. Going
north-east, it flows through a narrow valley, enclosed between wooded
hills and cliffs, dotted with picturesque villas and country houses,
and at Liège it is joined by the Ourthe. The river now enters Dutch
territory, and is henceforth called the Maas. Passing Maestricht,
or Maastricht, it flows by Roermond, where it receives the Roer,
and at Venlo a canal begins which connects it with the Scheldt. At
Gorinchem, it receives the Waal, an arm of the Rhine. Now the Maas soon
divides: the Merwede flowing west, while the southern arm falls into
the Biesbosch, an estuary of the sea. On reaching Dortrecht, river and
sea navigation begin. Here the Maas again divides. The Old Maas flows
directly west while the northern arm joins the Lek, a second branch of
the Rhine, and continues its course to Rotterdam, where the Rotte joins
it. The two arms unite here and flow into the North Sea by the Hook
of Holland. Schiedam and Vlardingen are the last places of importance
upon its banks. Including all windings, the Meuse is 580 miles long and
is navigable for about 460 miles. In the early part of its course the
Meuse traverses a wide valley covered by green meadows and then flows
through narrow gorges, hemmed in by high hills and cliffs. At Dinant,
picturesquely situated on the right bank, at the base of limestone
cliffs crowned by a fortress, it is said that Philip the Good, Duke
of Burgundy, and his son, Charles the Bold, having captured the town,
caused 800 people to be drowned in the Meuse. The river, however, quite
unconscious of this tragedy, flows on beneath a pinnacle of rock called
the _Roche à Bayard_, because the famous steed, Bayard, belonging to
the Quatre Fils d’Aymon, left a hoof-print here as it sprang over the
valley when pursued by Charlemagne. Rocks of fantastic shapes now
rise above the river, which is spanned by bridges. Innumerable villas
and ancestral castles peep through the thick foliage and command the
cliffs. The French border is reached at Givet; and at Sedan, memorable
for the battle between the French and Germans (September 1, 1870),
Belgian territory is entered. The hills and valleys in the vicinity of
Sedan were occupied by the Army of the Meuse.
At Namur, also grouped on the cliffs, the Meuse is crossed by several
stone bridges. The citadel on a hill between the Sambre and Meuse is
believed to occupy the site of the camp of the Aduatuci described by
Cæsar. The Meuse, flowing through the town of Liège, forms an island
which is connected with each bank by six bridges. The principal town
lies on the left bank: Outremeuse is a factory town on the right bank.
A fine view is afforded from the citadel (520 feet above the sea
level), erected by Prince Bishop Maximilian Henry of Bavaria in 1650,
on the site of earlier fortifications. The valleys of the Meuse, Ourthe
and Vesdre are here bounded on the south by the Ardennes, while the
Petersburg with Maestricht and the broad plains of Limburg are seen on
the north. On the opposite bank of the Meuse is the Chartreuse. The
river here is 460 feet wide and is crossed by several bridges, of which
the Pont des Arches, rebuilt in 1860-3, dates from the Eighth Century,
and is famous in local history.
After the train passes under the Chartreuse, the town of Jupille is
reached, a favourite residence of Pepin of Héristal, who died here in
714. The town was often visited by Charlemagne.
The Dutch custom-house is at Eysden, where a beautiful old _château_
is seen among its trees; and on the opposite bank of the Meuse, the
Petersburg rises 330 feet above the river, with the _château_ of
Castert on its summit. We are now in the Dutch province of Limburg,
with its capital, Maestricht, on the left bank of the Maas, the
_Trajectum Superius_ of the Romans (_Trajectum ad Mosam_), the seat of
a bishopric; the residence of Frankish Kings; and, later, the joint
possession of Prince Bishops of Liège and the Dukes of Brabant.
At Gorinchem the river is joined by the Waal and as both streams are
broad, an impressive sheet of water is the result. For a time, the
river is known as the Merwede. About four miles below Gorinchem, the
Biesbosch (reed forest) begins, a district of forty square miles and
consisting of 100 islands formed by a destructive inundation in 1421,
when seventy-two towns and villages and more than 100,000 persons
perished.
This inundation also separated the next town of importance, Dordrecht,
or Dort, as the Dutch call it, from the mainland. This town, one of the
wealthiest towns of the Netherlands in the Middle Ages, presents a most
picturesque appearance with its quaint gables, red-tiled roofs, and
the lofty square tower of the Groote Kerk, which has kept watch over
the Maas for six hundred years. How familiar it looks in the silvery
light of early morning or when flooded with the warm golden glow of the
afternoon to those who are well acquainted with the pictures of Cuyp
and Jan van Goyen! Could we wander through the town, we should find
much to study. There are numerous old mediæval houses in the Wynstraat;
the ancient gate, Groothoofd-Poort, that had to be rebuilt in 1618;
and the finest specimens of carving in Holland,--the choir-stalls of
1538-40 in the Groote Kerk. The harbour is full of boats and timber
rafts that have drifted down the Rhine from the Black Forest and the
_tjalks_, _praams_ and other Dutch boats, large and small, with their
lee-boards (called _zwaards_) used to steady the keelless boats, and
bright sails become more numerous.
The Maas now flows through typical Dutch landscapes and feeds many
canals that lead to Delft and other cities.
At length we reach Rotterdam which lies on both sides of the river;
the older city lies on the right bank of the Maas near its confluence
with the Rotte. The many docks and canals--Koningshaven, Nieuwehaven,
Haringvliet, Oudehaven, Wijnhaven, Scheepmakershaven, Leuvehaven,
Zalmhaven, Westerhaven, etc., are filled with ocean-going vessels
and river craft of all sizes and kinds, as well as nationalities,
presenting forests of masts and innumerable funnels. The streets
are animated with sailors and merchants, while the tree-bordered
embankment, called the Bompjes, affords a gay promenade.
On the way to the sea, Schiedam on the Schie, is passed, and also
the more interesting town of Vlaardingen, one of the oldest towns in
Holland, as is evidenced by the market-place. It is the _dépôt_ for the
“great fishery,” and from it a fleet of 125 boats and 1,500 men are
sent forth annually. Maasluis, the next town, which takes a share in
the “great fishery,” is passed, and then the open sea greets the Maas
at the Hook of Holland.
THE RHONE
ANGUS B. REACH
Few travellers have much fancy for the most rapid of the great European
streams. If they at all make its personal acquaintance, it is with
knapsack on back, and iron-shod _bâton_ in hand--when they stand upon
the mother-glacier, and watch the river-child glide brightly into
air--or perhaps it is near fair Geneva, that, loitering on a wooden
bridge, they mark the second start in life of the strong river, and,
if they be philosophers, lament the clamorous and not cleanly Arve.
Later in the river’s career--the pellucid waters of the snow are again
and still more fatally fouled by the slow-running Saone which comes
down by Lyons, heavy and fat with the rich mud of Burgundy. At the
point of junction there, also, the tourist sometimes goes to observe
the coalition of the streams, and to find out, that instead of the
bigger river cleansing the smaller, the smaller utterly besmirches and
begrimes the greater. So pondering over the moral, he too often takes
little further heed of the Rhone; or if he does, it is as a mere beast
of burden. He is bound south, and he knows that the “swift and arrowy
Rhone” will add wings to the speed of steam; that stepping on board the
long, long steamboat from the noble quays of Lyons at summer’s dawn,
he will step ashore amid the clamour of the uproarious Avignon porters
by the summer’s eve. But the day’s flight--through rocks, and vines,
and corn-lands, and by ancient towns and villages, and through old
bridges of stone, and modern bridges of boats, is to the conventional
traveller usually nearly a blank. How different from the Rhine; no
legends in the handbook, no castles, no picturesque students, no jolly
Burschen choruses over pipes and beer. The steamer flies southwards.
If she be one of the quickest of the Rhone fleet, and the river be in
good order, she could carry you between sunrise and sunset, from the
land where the chestnut and the walnut most abound, through the zone
where the mulberry is almost exclusively the tree; next past the region
where men are clipping, and twisting, and trimming the olive, at once
sacred and classic, and, finally, fairly into the flats, where tropical
rice grows out of fever-haunted swamps in the African-like jungles of
the Camargue. During this flight, it is to be noted, that you have
descended upwards of 600 feet, in fact, that you have been steaming
down a modified water-fall, and have measured in a day, a run from a
climate which may be described as temperate, to one which is, to all
intents and purposes, torrid.
[Illustration: THE RHONE]
And in this run must we not have passed some rather curious objects,
some rather striking points of scenery? May not there have been nooks,
and ravines, and old towers within that sterile, yet viney land,
burnt by the hot kiss of the sun, which are worthy of a traveller’s
afternoon? There are many such. The masonry of Rome still stands by the
stream, and ancient rock-perched ruins there are, telling grim tales of
the old religious wars of France; tales going back to the Albigenses
and Count Raymond of Toulouse, and in later days dealing with the feuds
which Ivry put an end to, but which were renewed when the peasants of
the wild hills of the Cevennes, in their white _camisas_, Langue d’
Oc for shirts, worn over their clothes as uniforms, held out the
long and obstinate contest of the dragonnades, and frequently beat
even Marichale Villars, with the best of the cavaliers of the Grand
Monarque. But there are still other points of interest connected with
the Rhone itself--parts and pendicles of the river. First, look at the
current. Did you ever see a blacker, fiercer, more unmercifully minded
looking stream? Take care how you get into it. There is drowning in
its aspect. A sudden sweep down that foaming current, and all would be
over. No swimming in these deadly whirling eddies. Once they embrace
you in their watery arms, down you go, never stopping, even to die, to
the sea, whither the Rhone is ever, ever rushing, ploughing its way
through shingles, roaring round opposing rocks, sometimes carrying by
assault a new channel through a green pasture, at others, when its
sudden floods are out, rushing with a furious vengeance, at what at
sunset was a fertile island, rich with the ripe corn, which to-morrow
will be a torrent, and a few morrows afterwards--sand.
In spite of its fury of current, in spite of its sudden shiftings of
sand and shingle banks, its sudden floods, its sudden fogs, the Rhone
has been navigated from time immemorial.
Toiling hard and slowly up the stream an _equipage_ goes crawling
along, composed of half a dozen huge barges hauled by those struggling,
splashing, panting horses on the bank. Before the introduction of
steam, there were upwards of fifty of these barge squadrons. They
floated down from Lyons to Beaucaire, opposite Arles, in two days, but
difficult and dreary was the passage back. A month in summer, six weeks
in winter were consumed in the tedious struggle with the ever-opposing
stream.
But our boat is sweeping towards a rocky promontory. The contracted
stream shoots rapidly through the defile; and, at the narrowest point,
a chain bridge appears, connecting two small villages clustered beneath
vine-covered steps. The crag above that on the right hand is castled
most picturesquely; that on the left is crowned with a more genial
diadem. The first village is Tournon, the second Tain. The latter is
poor, shabby, dirty: the houses are rickety and slovenly. All the slope
of the cliff is split up into squares, triangles, etc., and bounded
by stone walls: and these are full of vines--the aristocracy of the
grape--in short, Hermitage.
Descending the Rhone a little further, we find ourselves opposite
Valence. About a mile from the river--the intervening space is
corn-country, the fields dotted with mulberries--rises a bold and high
peak of rocks, and on their summit, a nobly perched lyric of a castle.
Clamber up! The hill is steep, and tough to ascend, and the heath
is slippery. Nevertheless, persevere, and be rewarded at length by
entering the ruins, where you will perceive a half-crumbled cavernous
looking recess in a thick wall. It seems to have been a fireplace.
Approach cautiously! That fireplace has no back, and fuel flung in
there will roll out at a hole behind, and find itself upwards of eight
hundred feet high in the yielding air.
The castle once belonged to a Protestant lord, the Seigneur de Crussol,
and when, after a successful foray across the river, amongst the
Catholic population, he managed to secure a score or two of prisoners,
high festival was held, and the unhappy captives, amid the brimming
glasses and convivial jokes of the company, were flung into the chimney
of Crussol, and found by the trembling peasantry indefinite masses of
horror next morning.
These were wild old savage days; but let us go back for a few moments
to days far more ancient though hardly more barbarous. Hannibal,
coming from Spain, also crossed the Rhone; and, looking at that wild
rushing river, so deep and broad, and perpetual in its current, we have
often thought that the great Carthaginian performed a more brilliant
exploit in getting his moorish cavalry, his war-elephants, and his
undisciplined Spanish brigades, across the water, than across the
mountains. No one knows the spot he selected for his ferriage. Imagine
the leader with his troops encamped, and chafing at the broad river
which lay between them and those distant snow-capped hills, beyond
which was Italy. In three days, we are told, the feat was achieved.
Apocryphal accounts tell us how the horses, mad with the terror of
fire, swam wildly across the stream, and how the elephants trumpeted
upon the rafts.
A wide champagne country, fertile to magnificent luxuriance--the
rushing Rhone dotted with wooded islands; a city clustering on a hill
and a castle crowning it, and we approach Avignon. Here the traveller
usually leaves the river (if he be antiquarian and historic) and
examines the noble churches, towers, bastions and dungeons with which
the Avignon Popes beautified the city; or, if he be sentimental and
romantic, he prepares his feelings, works them--hard work it usually
is--into a proper frame, and proceeds to Vaucluse. A pretty spot it is
in itself, with its grottoed rocks and limpid waters; and certainly the
name of Petrarch may fairly enough add a certain degree of interest to
the scene.
The last point of interest is the delta of the river; the several
mouths through which, after its rapid course from the lake of Geneva,
the Rhone at length pours itself into the sea. The Carmargue, as
this strange swampy district is called, is seldom or ever trodden by
English foot. It has no attractions for the ordinary sightseer, but it
has many for the lover of aspects of nature, of a strange and unwonted
character, and of which few are to be seen in Europe. Proceeding from
Arle, along a muddy, clayey road, through a perfect flat intersected
by numerous draining ditches, you gradually find yourself arriving
in a region where the earth appears to be losing its consistence and
melting into mud beneath your feet. Forests of swamp-growing trees,
willows, and marsh-mallows stretch around; and as you emerge from them
you come upon a boundless plain, an enormous stagnant flat--mud and
water and water and mud for scores and scores of square miles, but
intersected as far as the eye can reach, by a network of clay walls,
upon which you can make your way, gazing in wonder upon the perfect
sublimity of the apparent desolation. But there is no desolation in the
case. These swamps are rice-fields. If you paid your visit during the
summer, the grain will be growing out of the tepid water; if during
the autumn, you will see withered beds of the straw left for manure,
slowly rotting in the soil. At long distances crawling figures appear.
These are the labourers employed by the Company which grows the rice,
and whose stations for draining out the surplus water, which would
otherwise perhaps overwhelm the whole district, may be fixed by their
lofty siphon tubes breaking the dead flatness of the several lines of
view. And yet there is a dreary death-like beauty about all this silent
land. Shelley has sung such; Tennyson has done it more elaborately and
better, and we find traces of the sentiment in “Eothen.” The vast and
the drear have a sublime of their own, and in this dismal waste of
laid-out world we feel it. Even ugliness is made respectable by extent,
and we leave the swamps with an impression of lorn, melancholy grandeur
looming in our minds.
THE YUKON
WILLIAM OGILVIE
To within a few years ago a great unexplored solitude extended to the
eastward between the valleys of the Upper Yukon, or Lewes, and the
Mackenzie, and from the sixtieth parallel of latitude northward to
the shores of the “frozen ocean.” This extensive region is known as
the Yukon country, a name rendered appropriate by the fact that it is
drained by the Yukon River and its tributaries, which form one of the
great river systems of the world.
Walled in by high mountains, and in consequence unapproachable from
every side, it is not strange that the Yukon district should so long
have remained in almost undisturbed seclusion. Had it not been for the
fact that the rich metalliferous belt of the Coast and Gold Ranges
passes through the district from one end to the other, the probability
is that it would still have remained unexplored for many years to come.
Only four gates of approach to the district exist, and, strangely
enough, these are situated at the four corners. From the north-west,
access is gained to the country by following the Yukon from its mouth
in Behring Sea; from the north-east, by crossing from the Mackenzie to
the Porcupine, and following down the latter stream to its confluence
with the Yukon; from the south-east, by ascending the Liard from Fort
Simpson and crossing the water-shed to the head-waters of the Pelly;
and finally, from the south-west, by entering where the coast range is
pierced by the Chilkoot and Chilkat Passes.
As a matter of fact, all these routes are beset with difficulties, and
when it is remembered that there are only four roads into a region
three times greater in extent than the total area of the New England
States, it is not to be wondered at that the total population of the
region should consist of a few scattered Indian families and a hundred
or so of hardy miners.
Occasional contributions to our knowledge of the district have been
made from time to time for at least half a century, mainly by officers
of the Hudson’s Bay Company, miners and _employés_ of the abandoned
Telegraph Expedition; and skeleton maps of the interior have been
constructed in accordance with the topographical data, so far as known.
Among recent expeditions that of Lieutenant Schwatka, of the United
States Army, in the summer of 1883, may be mentioned. Entering the
country by the Chilkoot Pass, Lieutenant Schwatka floated down the
Yukon on a raft from the source of the Lewes River to Nuklikahyet,
continuing his journey from this point to the sea by boat. The object
of this expedition was to examine the country from a military point
of view, and to collect all available information with regard to the
Indian tribes. We are indebted to it also for a great deal of general
information with regard to the country. Schwatka, who seems to have
gone through the country with his eyes open, used the explorer’s
baptismal privilege freely, and scattered monuments of Schwatkanian
nomenclature broadcast throughout the land, re-christening many places
that had already been named, and doing so too in apparent indifference
to the fact that many thus set aside had an established priority of
many years.
The part of the journey between Victoria and Chilkoot Inlet has been so
much written of, talked of and pictured during the last few years that
I will repeat only one of the many statements made concerning it--that
though it is in ocean waters and can be traversed by the largest ships,
it is so sheltered by countless islands from the gales and waves of
the vast Pacific, nearly the whole of the length, that its waters are
always as smooth as those of a large river. In marked contrast to this
is the west coast of the United States, where harbours are like angel’s
visits.
Chatham Strait and Lynn Channel lie almost in a straight line, and
during the summer there is always a strong wind blowing up from the
sea. At the head of Lynn Channel are Chilkat and Chilkoot Inlets. The
distance down these channels to the open sea is about three hundred
and eighty miles, and along the whole extent of this the mountains on
each side of the water confine the incoming currents of air and deflect
inclined currents in the direction of the axis of the channel. Coming
from the sea, these air currents are heavily charged with moisture,
which is precipitated when they strike the mountains, and the fall of
rain and snow is consequently very heavy.
The rapids extending for a couple of miles below the Cañon, are not
at all bad. What constitutes the real danger is a piece of calm water
forming a short, sharp bend in the river, which hides the last or
“White Horse” rapids from sight until they are reached. These rapids
are about three-eighths of a mile long. They are the most dangerous
on the river, and are never run through in boats except by accident.
Parties always examine the Cañon and rapids below before going
through, and coming to the calm water suppose they have seen them all,
as all noise from the lower rapid is drowned in that of the ones above.
On this account several parties have run through the “White Horse,”
being ignorant of its existence until they were in it. These rapids
are confined by low basaltic banks, which, at the foot, suddenly close
in and make the channel about thirty yards wide. It is here the danger
lies, as there is a sudden drop, and the water rushes through at a
tremendous rate, leaping and seething like a cataract. The miners have
constructed a portage road on the west side, and put down rollways in
some places on which to shove their boats over. They have also made
some windlasses with which to haul their boats uphill, notably one at
the foot of the Cañon. This roadway and the windlasses must have cost
them many hours of hard labour.
Lake Labarge was reached on the evening of the 26th of July, and our
camp pitched on its southern shore. The lake is thirty-one miles in
length, broad at both ends and narrow in the middle, lying north and
south, like a long slender foot-print made by some gigantic Titan in
long-bygone days.
As the prevailing wind blows almost constantly down the lake, the
miners complain much of the detention from the roughness of the water,
and for the three days I was on the lake, I certainly cannot complain
of any lack of attention from blustering Australis.
The survey was carried along the western shore, which is irregular in
shape, being indented by large, shallow bays, especially at the upper
and lower ends.
Just above where the lake narrows in the middle, there is a large
island, which is shown on Schwatka’s map as a peninsula, and called
by him Richtofen Rocks. How he came to think it a peninsula I cannot
understand, as it is well out in the lake; the nearest point of it to
the western shore is upwards of half a mile distant, and the extreme
width of the lake here, as determined from triangulation, is not more
than five miles, which includes the depth of the deepest bays on the
western side. It is therefore difficult to understand that he did not
see it as an island. The upper half of this island is gravelly, and
does not rise very high above the lake; the lower end is rocky and
high, the rock of a bright red colour and probably granite.
At the lower end of the lake there is a deep wide valley extending
northwards, which has evidently at one time been the outlet of the
lake. In this the mixed timber, poplar, and spruce, is of a size which
betokens a fair soil; the herbage, too, is more than usually rich for
this region. This valley, which Dr. Dawson has named “Ogilvie Valley,”
is extensive, and if ever required as an aid to the sustenance of our
people, will figure largely in the district’s agricultural assets.
We left this, the last lake of the great chain, behind us on Saturday,
the 30th of July, and proceeded with a moderate current of about four
miles an hour. The river just here is crooked and runs past high, steep
banks surmounted by scrub pine and stunted poplar which shut in the
narrow valley. There are, however, many flats of moderate extent, along
the river and at its confluence with other streams, where the soil is
fair.
The waters of the Big Salmon are sluggish and slow. The valley, as seen
from the mouth, is wide, and gives one the impression of being occupied
by a much more important stream. Looking up it, in the distance could
be seen many high peaks covered with snow, and, as this was in the
beginning of August, it is likely they are always covered so--which
would make their probable altitude above the river, five thousand feet
or more.