TRAVELLING ON THE RHINE.
The steamboats and hotels, and all the arrangements made for the
accommodation of travellers on the Rhine, are entirely different from
those of any American river, partly for the reason that so very large a
portion of the travelling there is pleasure travelling. The boats are
smaller, and they go more frequently. The company is more select. They
sit upon the deck, under the awnings, all the day, looking at their
guide books, and maps, and panoramas of the river, and studying out the
names and history of the villages, and castles, and ruined towers, which
they pass on the way. The hotels are large and very elegant. They are
built on the banks of the river, or wherever there is the finest view,
and the dining room is always placed in the best part of the house, the
windows from it commanding views of the mountains, or overlooking the
water, so that in sitting at table to eat your breakfast, or your
dinner, you have before you all the time some charming view. Then there
is usually connected with the dining room, and opening from it, some
garden or terrace, raised above the road and the river, with seats and
little tables there, shaded by trees, or sheltered by bowers, where
ladies and gentlemen can sit, when the weather is pleasant, and read, or
drink their tea or coffee, or explore, with an opera glass, or a spy
glass, the scenery around. They can see the towers and castles across
the river, and follow the little paths leading in zigzag lines up among
the vineyards to the watchtowers, and pavilions, and belvideres, that
are built on the pinnacles of the rocks, or on the summits of the lower
mountains.
The hotels and inns, even in the smallest villages, are very nice and
elegant in all their interior arrangements. These small villages consist
usually of a crowded collection of the most quaint and queer-looking
houses, or rather huts, of stone, with an antique and venerable-looking
church in the midst of them, looking still more quaint and queer than
the houses. The hotels, however, in these villages, or rather on the
borders of them,--for the hotels are often built on the open ground
beyond the town, where there is room for gardens and walks, and raised
terraces around them,--are palaces in comparison with the dwellings of
the inhabitants. And well they may be, for the villagers are almost all
laborers of a very humble class--boatmen, who get their living by plying
boats up and down the river; vinedressers, who cultivate the vineyards
of the neighboring hills; or hostlers and coachmen, who take care of the
carriages and of the horses employed in the traffic of the river. A
great number of horses are employed; for not only are the carriages of
such persons as choose to travel on the Rhine by land, or to make
excursions on the banks of the river, drawn by them, but almost all the
boats, except the steamboats that go up the river, are _towed_ up by
these animals. To enable them to do this, a regular tow path has been
formed all the way up the river, on the left bank, and boats of all
shapes and sizes are continually to be seen going up, drawn, like canal
boats in America, by horses--and sometimes even by men. Once I saw some
boys drawing up a small boat in this way. It seems they had been going
down the stream to take a sail, or perhaps to convey a traveller down;
and now they were coming up again, drawing their boat by walking along
the bank, the current being so rapid that it is much easier to draw a
boat up than it is to row it. The boys had a long line attached to the
mast of their boat, and both of them were drawing upon this line by
means of broad bands, forming a sort of harness, which were passed
over their shoulders.
[Illustration]
Now, the small villages that I was speaking of are formed almost
exclusively of the dwellings of the various classes which I have
described, while the hotels or inns that are built on the margins of
them are intended, not as they would be in America, for the
accommodation of the people of the same class, but for travellers of
wealth, and rank, and distinction, who come from all quarters of the
world to explore the beauties and study the antiquities of the Rhine.
Thus the inns, however small and secluded they may be, and however
retired and solitary the places in which they stand, are always very
nice, and even elegant, in their interior arrangements. The chambers are
furnished and arranged in the prettiest possible manner. Handsome open
carriages and pretty boats are ready to convey visitors on any excursion
which they may desire to make in the neighborhood, and the table is
provided with almost as many delicacies and niceties as you can have in
Paris.
The roads along the banks of the Rhine, too, are absolutely perfect.
Well they may be so in fact, for workmen have been constantly employed
in making and perfecting them for nearly two thousand years. Julius
Caesar worked upon them. Charlemagne worked upon them. Frederic the
Great worked upon them. Napoleon worked upon them. They are walled up
wherever necessary on the side towards the river; the rock is cut away
on the side towards the land; valleys have been filled up; hill sides
have been terraced, and ravines bridged over; until the road, though
passing along the margin of a very mountainous region, is almost as
level as a railway throughout the whole of its course. And as it is
macadamized throughout, and is kept in the most perfect condition, it is
always, in wet weather as well as dry, as firm, and hard, and smooth as
a floor.
With such roads and such carriages on the land, and such pretty
steamboats as they have upon the water, it would be very pleasant going
up through the highlands of the Rhine, if there were nothing but the
natural scenery to attract the eye of the traveller. But besides the
quaint and ancient villages, and the curious old churches which adorn
them,--villages which sometimes line the margin of the water, and
sometimes cling to the slopes of the hills, or nestle in the higher
valleys,--there are other still stronger attractions, in the castles,
towers, and palaces, which are seen scattered every where on the river
banks, adorning every prominent and commanding position along the
shores, and crowning, in many cases, the summits of the hills. Many of
these castles and towers, though built originally hundreds of years ago,
are still kept in repair and inhabited, some being used as the summer
residences of princes, or of private men of fortune, and others, being
armed with cannon and garrisoned with soldiers, are held as strongholds
by the kings, or dukes, or electors, in whose dominions they lie. There
are a great many of them, however, that have been allowed to go to
decay; and the ruins of these still stand, presenting to the eye of the
traveller who gazes up to them from the deck of the steamer, or from his
seat in his carriage, or who climbs up to visit them more closely, by
means of the zigzag paths which lead to them, very interesting relics
and memorials of ancient times. The ruins are generally on very lofty
summits, and they usually occupy the most commanding positions, so that
the view from them up and down the river is almost always very grand.
The castles were built by the dukes, and barons, and other feudal
chieftains of the middle ages, and they are placed in these commanding
positions in order that the chieftains who lived in them might watch the
river, and the roads leading along the banks of it, and come down with a
troop of their followers to exact what they called tribute, but what
those who had to pay it called plunder, from the merchants or travellers
whom they saw from the windows of their watchtowers, passing up and
down.
In fact these men were really robbers; being just like any other
robbers, excepting that they restricted themselves to some rule and
system in their plunderings, such as an enlightened regard for their own
interest required. If, when they found a vessel laden with merchandise,
or a company of travellers coming down the river, they had robbed them
of every thing they possessed, the river and the roads would soon have
been entirely abandoned, and their occupation would have been gone. In
order to avoid this result, they were accustomed to content themselves
with a certain portion of the value which the traveller was carrying;
and they called the money which they exacted a tribute, or tax, paid for
the privilege of passing through their dominions. They kept continual
watch in their lofty castles, both up and down the river, to see who
came by, and then, descending with a sufficient force to render
resistance useless, they would take what they pretended to consider
their due, and retreat with it to their almost inaccessible fastnesses,
where they were safe from all pursuers.
They often had wars with one another; and in the progress of these wars
the weaker chieftains became, in the course of time, subjected to the
stronger, and thus two or more small dominions would often become united
into one. These amalgamations went on continually; and as they advanced,
the condition of the cultivator of the ground, and of the peaceful
merchant or traveller, was improved, for the rules and regulations for
the collection of the tribute became more fixed and settled, and men
knew more and more what they could calculate upon, and could regulate
their business accordingly. Arrangements were made, too, to collect a
regular tax from the cultivators of the ground; and just so far as these
arrangements were matured, and the produce of the plunder, or the
tribute, or the tax, or whatever we call it, increased, just so far it
became for the interest of the chieftains that the cultivation of the
land and the traffic on the river should be increased, and should be
protected from all depredations but their own. Thus a system of law grew
up, and arrangements for preserving public order, for promoting the
general industry, and rules and regulations for the collection of the
tribute, until at length, when all these arrangements were matured, and
the multitude of petty chieftains became combined under one great
chieftain ruling over the whole, and collecting the revenue for his
subordinates, we find a great kingdom as the result, in which the
descendants of the ancient marauders that lived in castles on the hills,
under the name of princes and nobles, collect the means of enabling
themselves to live in idleness and luxury out of the avails of the labor
of the agriculturists, the merchants, and the manufacturers, by a
combined and concerted arrangement, and a regular system of rents,
taxes, and tolls, instead of by irregular forrays and depredations, as
in former years.
When any one of these nobles is questioned as to the nature of his claim
to the enjoyment of so large a portion of the produce of the land,
without doing any thing to earn or deserve it, he says that it is a
_vested right_; that is, that he has a right to claim and take a certain
portion of the proceeds of the toil of the _present_ generation of
laborers, because his forefathers claimed and took a similar portion
from theirs. And the one monarch, whose ancestors succeeded in
overpowering or crowding out the others, claims his right to rule on the
same ground. Thus, in the progress of ages, by a strange commutation,
robbery and plunder, when systematized, and extended, and established on
a permanent basis, become legitimacy, and the divine right of kings.
In America there is no such division of the fruits of industry between
those who do the work and a class of idle nobles, and soldiers, and
priests, who do nothing but consume the proceeds of it. There every man
possesses the full fruit of his labor, except so far as he himself joins
with his fellow-citizens in setting apart a portion for the purposes of
public and general utility. This is the reason why such immense numbers
of laboring men are every year leaving Germany and emigrating to
America.
But to return to the Rhine. Of course, just so fast and so far as the
smaller chieftains were conquered and dispossessed, and the country came
into the hands of a smaller number of greater princes, the old castles
became useless. Besides, when rules and laws, instead of surprises and
violence, became the means by which contributions were levied, it was no
longer necessary to have strongholds on high hills to come down from,
when a vessel or a traveller was coming by, and to retreat to with the
booty when the plunder had been taken. A great number of these old
castles have, therefore, gone to decay; for they were generally built
too high on the hills and rocks to be convenient as dwellings for
peaceable men. A few of the largest and strongest of them were retained
as fortresses; and those that were retained have been greatly enlarged
and strengthened in their defences in modern times, so that some of them
are now the greatest and strongest fortresses in the world. Others, that
were built in tolerably accessible situations, or which commanded an
unusually beautiful view, were retained and kept in repair, and are used
now as the summer residences of wealthy men. The rest were suffered
gradually to go to decay, and the ruins and remains of them are seen
crowning almost every remarkable height all along the river. Some of
these ruins are still in a very good state of preservation, so that in
going up to explore them you can make out very easily the whole original
plan of the edifice. You can find the turret, with the remains of the
stairs which led up to the watchtower, and the kitchen, and the hall,
and the armory, and the stables. In others, there is nothing to be seen
but a confused mass of unintelligible ruins; and in others still, every
thing is gone, except, perhaps, some single arch or gateway, which
stands among a mass of shapeless mounds, the last remaining relic of the
edifice it once adorned, and itself tottering, perhaps, on the brink of
its precipitous foundation, as if just ready to fall.
[Illustration: DONKEY RIDING.]
These old ruins are visited every year by thousands of persons who come
from every part of the world to see them. These visitors arrive every
year in such numbers that the steamboats, both going up and coming down,
and all the hotels, and thousands of carriages, which are perpetually
plying to and fro along the shores on both sides of the river, are
constantly filled with them. A great many people merely pass up or down
the river in a steamer, in a day and a night, and only see the ruins and
the other scenery by gazing at them from the deck of the vessel. But in
this case they get no idea whatever of the Rhine. It is necessary to
travel slowly, to stop frequently at the towns on the bank, to make
excursions along the shores and into the interior, and to ascend to the
sites of the ruins, and to other elevated points, so as to view the
valley and the stream meandering through it from above, or you obtain no
correct idea whatever of travelling on the Rhine.
The work of ascending to the old ruins would be a very arduous and
difficult one for all but the young and robust, were it not for the
assistance that is afforded by the donkeys that are kept at the foot of
every remarkable hill that travellers might be supposed desirous to
ascend. These donkeys have a sort of chair fitted upon them, that is, a
saddle, flat upon the top, and guarded all around one side by a sort of
back, like the back of a chair. The trappings are covered with some
kind of scarlet cloth, so that the troop of donkeys standing together
under the shade of the trees, at the foot of the hill which they are to
ascend, make a very gay appearance. The donkeys look very small to bear
so heavy a load as a full grown person; but they are very strong, and
they carry their burden quite easily, especially as the distance is not
very great. For these mountains of the Rhine, celebrated as they are for
the romantic grandeur which they impart to the scenery, are, after all,
seldom more than a few hundred feet high. There is also, almost always,
an excellent path leading up to them. It winds usually by zigzags
through the groves of trees, or between gardens and vineyards, in a very
delightful manner, so that the ascent in going up any of these hills
would make a very pleasant excursion even without the ruins on the top.
Such, in its general features, is the mountainous region of the Rhine,
as it appears to the travellers who go to visit it at the present day;
and it was this region that Rollo and Mr. George were now going to
explore.