Sigmaringen--Treacherous trees--Congress of herons--Flying
Dutchman--Tub and shovel--Bottle race--Snags--Bridge perils--Ya
Vol--Ferry rope--Benighted.
The sides of the river were now less precipitous, and the road came
within a field or two of the water, and made it seem quite homely for a
time.
I had heard a loud jingling sound on this road for at least
half-an-hour, and observed a long cart with two horses trotting fast,
and evidently daring to race with the Rob Roy. But at length such
earnest signals were made from it that I stopped, and the cart at once
pulled up, and from it there ran across the field a man breathless and
hot, without his hat, and followed by two young ladies, equally hurried.
He was a German, resident for a short time in London, and now at home
for a month's holiday, and he was prodigal of thanks for my "great
courtesy" in having stopped that the ladies might see the canoe which
they had followed thus for some miles, having heard of its fame at their
village. On another occasion three youths voluntarily ran alongside the
boat and panted in the sun, and tumbled over stocks and stones at such a
rate, that after a mile of the supererogatory exercise, I asked what it
was all about. Excellent villagers! they had taken all this trouble to
arrive at a point further down the stream where they knew there was a
hard place, and they thought they might help me in passing it.
Such exertions on behalf of a stranger were really most kind, and when I
allowed them to give a nominal help, where in reality it was easy enough
to get on unaided, they were much delighted and more than rewarded, and
went back prattling their purest Suabian in a highly satisfied frame of
mind.
Many are the bends and currents, but at last we arrive at the town of
Sigmaringen. It has certainly an aristocratic air, though there are only
3,000 inhabitants; but then it has a Principality, though the whole
population of this is only 52,000. Fancy a parish in London with a
Prince all to themselves, and--bearing such a fine grand name too--"His
Royal Serene Highness the Hereditary Prince of Hohenzollern
Sigmaringen." But though I have often laughed at this petty kingdom in
the Geography books, I shall never do so again, for it contains some of
the most beautiful river scenery in the world, and I never had more
unalloyed pleasure in passing through a foreign dominion.
There are pretty gardens here, and a handsome Protestant church, and a
few good shops, schlosses on the hills, and older castles perched on
high rocks in the usual picturesque and uncomfortable places where our
ancestors built their nests.
The Deutscher Hof is the hotel just opened three weeks ago, and all its
inmates are in a flutter when their first English guest marches up to
the door with a boat and a great company of gazers. The waiter too, all
fresh from a year in London at the Palace Hotel, Buckingham Gate, how
glad he is that his English is now in requisition, sitting by me at
dinner and talking most sensibly all the time.
The weather still continued superb as we paddled away. Deep green woods
dipped their lower branches in the water, but I found that the stream
had sometimes a fashion of carrying the boat under these, and it is
especially needful to guard against this when a sharp bend with a fast
current hurries you into a wooded corner. Indeed, strange as it may
seem, there was more danger to the boat from these trees than from rocks
or banks, and far more trouble. For when the boat gets under their low
branches your paddle is quite powerless, because you cannot lower one
end to hold the water without raising the other and so catching it in
the trees. Then if you put your head down forward you cannot see, and
the boughs are generally as hard as an ordinary skull when the two are
in collision. Finally, if you lean backwards the twigs scrape your face
and catch upon a nose even of ordinary length, and if you take your hand
from the paddle to protect the face away goes the paddle into the river.
Therefore, although my hat was never knocked off, and my skull was
always the hardest, and my paddle was never lost, and my nose was never
de-Romanized by the branches, I set it down as a maxim, to keep clear of
trees in a stream.
Still it was tempting to go under shady groves when I tried to surprise
a flock of herons or a family of wild ducks.
Once we came upon twenty-four herons all together. As my boat advanced
silently, steadily gliding, it was curious to watch these birds, who had
certainly never been disturbed before by any boat in such a place.
They stared eagerly at me and then looked at each other, and evidently
took a vote of the assembly as to what all this could mean. If birds'
faces can give any expression of their opinions, it is certain that one
of these herons was saying then to the others "Did you ever?" and an
indignant sneer was on another's beak that plainly answered, "Such
impudence indeed!" while a third added, with a sarcastic chirp, "And a
foreigner too!" But, after consultation, they always got up and circled
round, flew down stream, and then settled all again together in an
adjourned meeting. A few minutes brought me to their new retreat, and so
we went on for miles, they always flying down stream, and always
assembling, though over and over again disturbed, until an amendment on
the plan was moved and they bent their way aside.
A pleasant and favourable breeze springing up, which soon freshened into
a gale, I now set my sails, and the boat went with very great speed;
dashing over rocks and bounding past the haymakers so fast that when one
who caught sight of her had shouted to the rest of his "mates," the
sight was departed for ever before they came, and I heard them behind me
arguing, probably about the ghost.
But it was a shame to be a phantom ship too often, and it was far more
amusing to go right into the middle of these people, who knew nothing
about the canoe, who had never seen a boat, and never met a foreigner in
their lives. Thus, when a waterfall was found too high to "shoot," or a
wide barrier made it advisable to take the boat by land, I used to walk
straight into the hayfields, pushing the boat point foremost through a
hedge, or dragging her steadily over the wet newly-mown grass in literal
imitation of the American craft which could go "wherever there was a
heavy dew." On such occasions the amazement of the untaught clowns,
beholding suddenly such an apparition, was beyond all description. Some
even ran away, very often children cried outright, and when I looked
gravely on the ground as I marched and dragged the boat, and then
suddenly stopped in their midst with a hearty laugh and an address in
English, the whole proceeding may have appeared to them at least as
strange as it did to me.
[Illustration: "In the Hayfields."]
The water of the river all at once became here of a pale white colour,
and I was mourning that my pretty scenes below were clouded; but in
about thirty miles the pebbly deeps appeared again, and the stream
resumed its charming limpid clearness. This matter of dark or bright
water is of some importance, because, when it is clear you can easily
estimate after a little experience the general depth, even at some
distance, by the shades and hues of the water, while the sunk rocks, big
stones, and other particular obstacles are of course more visible then.
Usually I got well enough fed at some village, or at least at a house,
but in this lonely part of the river it seemed wise to take provender
with me in the boat, and to picnic in some quiet pool, with a shady tree
above. One of the very few boats I saw on the river appeared as I was
thus engaged, and a little boy was in it. His specimen of naval
architecture (no doubt the only one he had ever seen) was an odd
contrast to the beautifully finished canoe made by Searle. He had a pole
and a shovel; the latter article he used as a paddle, and his boat was
of enormous thickness and clumsiness, made of three planks, abundantly
clamped with iron. I gave him some bread, and we had a chat; then some
butter, and then some cheese. He would not take wine, but he produced a
cigar from his wet jacket, and also two matches, which he lighted with
great skill. We soon got to be friends, as people do who are together
alone, and in the same mode of travelling, riding, or sailing, or on
camels' backs. So we smiled in sympathy, and I asked him if he could
read, and gave him a neat little page prettily printed in German, with a
red border. This he read very nicely and was glad to put in his ragged
pocket; but he could scarcely part from me, and struggled vainly to urge
his tub along with the shovel till we came to a run of dashing waves,
and then of course I had to leave him behind, looking and yearning, with
a low, murmuring sound, and a sorrowful, earnest gaze I shall never
forget.
Shoals of large and small fish are in this river, and very few
fishermen. I did not see ten men fishing in ten days. But the pretty
little Kingfisher does not neglect his proper duties, and ever and anon
his round blue back shines in the sun as he hurries away with a note of
protest against the stranger who has invaded his preserves. Bees are
buzzing while the sun is hot, and when it sinks, out gush the endless
mazes of gnats to hop and flit their tangled dances, the creatures of a
day--born since the morning, and to die at night.
Before the Danube parted with the rocks that had been on each side for
days together, it played some strange pranks among them, and they with
it.
Often they rose at each side a hundred feet without a bend, and then
behind these were broken cliffs heaved this way and that, or tossed
upside down, or as bridges hanging over chasms.
Here and there a huge splinted tooth-like spire of stone stuck out of
the water, leaning at an angle. Sometimes in front there was a veritable
upright wall, as smooth as if it were chiselled, and entirely cutting
off the middle of the stream. In advancing steadily to such a place it
was really impossible to determine on which side the stream could by any
means find an exit, and once indeed I was persuaded that it must descend
below.
In other cases the river, which had splayed out its width to that of the
Thames at Hungerford, would suddenly narrow its size to a six-foot
passage, and rush down that with a "whishhh!" The Rob Roy cheerily sped
through these, but I landed to scan the course before attempting the
most difficult cuts.--Oh how lonely it was! A more difficult vagary to
cope with was when in a dozen petty streams the water tumbled over as
many little cascades, and only one was passable--sometimes not one. The
interest of finding these, examining, trying, failing, and succeeding,
was a continuous delight, and filled up every mile with a series of
exciting incidents, till at length the rocks were done.
And now we enter a vast plain, with the stream bending round on itself,
and hurrying swiftly on through the innumerable islands, eddies, and
"snags," or trees uprooted, sticking in the water. At the most critical
part of this labyrinth we were going a tremendous pace, when suddenly we
came to a fork in the river, with the volumes of water going down both
channels nearly equal. We could not descend by one of these because a
tree would catch the mast, so I instantly turned into the other, when up
started a man and shouted impetuously that no boat could pass by _that_
course. It was a moment of danger, but I lowered the sails in that
moment, took down my mast, and, despite stream and gale, I managed to
paddle back to the proper channel. As no man had been seen for hours
before, the arrival of this warning note was opportune.
A new amusement was invented to-day--it was to pitch out my empty
wine-bottle and to watch its curious bobbings and whirlings as the
current carried it along, while I floated near and compared the natural
course taken by the bottle with the selected route which intelligence
gave to the Rob Roy. Soon the bottle became impersonated, and we were
racing together, and then a sympathy began for its well-known cork as it
plumped down when its bottom struck a stone--for the bottle drew more
water than my canoe--and every time it grounded there came a loud and
melancholy clink of the glass, and down it went.
The thick bushes near the river skirted it now for miles, and at one
place I could see above me, through the upper branches, about 20
haymakers, men and women, who were honestly working away, and therefore
had not observed my approach.
I resolved to have a bit of fun here, so we closed in to the bank, but
still so as to see the industrious group. Then suddenly I began in a
very loud voice with--
"Rule, Britannia,
Britannia rules the waves."
Long before I got to the word "slaves" the whole party were like
statues, silent and fixed in amazement. Then they looked right, left,
before, behind, and upwards in all directions, except, of course, into
the river, for why should they look _there_? nothing had ever come up
from the river to disturb their quiet mead. I next whistled a lively
air, and then dashing out of my hiding-place stood up in my boat, and
made a brief (but, we trust, brilliant) speech to them in the best
English I could muster, and in a moment afterwards we had vanished from
their sight.
A little further on there was some road-making in progress, and I pulled
up my boat under a tree and walked up to the "barraque," or workman's
canteen, and entered among 30 or 40 German "navvies," who were sitting
at their midday beer. I ordered a glass and drank their health standing,
paid, bowed, and departed, but a general rush ensued to see where on
earth this flannel-clad being had come from, and they stood on the bank
in a row as I waded, shoved, hauled, paddled, and carried my boat
through a troublesome labyrinth of channels and embankments, with which
their engineering had begun to spoil the river.
But the bridges one had now more frequently to meet were far worse
encroachments of civilization, for most of them were so low that my mast
would not pass under without heeling the boat over to one side, so as to
make the mast lean down obliquely. In one case of this kind she was very
nearly shipwrecked, for the wind was so good that I would not lower the
sail, and this and a swift current took us (me and my boat--she is now,
you see, installed as a "person") rapidly to the centre arch, when just
as we entered I noticed a fierce-looking snag with a sharp point exactly
in my course. To swerve to the side would be to strike the wooden pier,
but even this would be better (for I might ward off the violence of a
blow near my hands) than to run on the snag, which would be certain to
cut a hole.
With a heavy thump on the pier the canoe began to capsize, and only by
the nearest escape was she saved from foundering. What I thought was a
snag turned out to be the point of an iron stake or railing, carelessly
thrown into the water from the bridge above.
It may be here remarked that many hidden dangers occur near bridges, for
there are wooden or iron bars fixed under water, or rough sharp stones
lying about, which, being left there when the bridge was building, are
never removed from a river not navigable or used by boats.
Another kind of obstruction is the thin wire rope suspended across the
rivers, where a ferry is established by running a flat boat over the
stream with cords attached to the wire rope. The rope is black in
colour, and therefore is not noticed till you approach it too near to
lower the mast, but this sort of danger is easily avoided by the
somewhat sharp "look-out" which a week or two on the water makes quite
instinctive and habitual. Perhaps one of the many advantages of a river
tour is the increased acuteness of observation which it requires and
fosters.
I stopped next at a clumsy sort of town called Riedlingen, where an
Englishman is a very rare visitor. The excitement here about the boat
became almost ridiculous, and one German, who had been in America and
could jabber a little in English, was deputed to ask questions, while
the rest heard the answers interpreted.
Next morning at eight o'clock at least a thousand people gathered on the
bridge and its approaches to see the boat start, and shoals of
schoolboys ran in, each with his little knapsack of books.[XIII.]
[XIII.] Knapsack, from "schnap," "sach," provision bag, for "bits
and bats," as we should say; havresack is from "hafer," "forage bag."
Query.--Does this youthful carriage of the knapsack adapt boys for
military service, and does it account for the high shoulders of many
Germans?
The scenery after this became of only ordinary interest compared with
what I had passed through, but there would have been little spare time
to look at it had it been ever so picturesque, for the wind was quite a
gale,[XIV.] and right in my favour, and the stream was fast and tortuous
with banks, eddies, and innumerable islands and cross channels, so that
the navigation occupied all one's energy, especially as it was a point
of honour not to haul down the sail in a fair wind.
[XIV.] In the newspaper accounts of the weather it was stated that
at this time a storm swept over Central Europe.
Midday came, and yet I could find no place to breakfast, though the
excitement and exertion of thus sailing was really hard work. But still
we hurried on, for dark clouds were gathering behind, and thunder and
rain seemed very near.
"Ah," said I inwardly, "had I only listened to that worthy dame's
entreaties this morning to take good provision for the day!" She had
smiled like the best of mothers, and timidly asked to be allowed to
touch my watch-chain, "it was so _schon_," so beautiful to see. But,
oddly enough, we had taken no solid food on board to-day, being so
impatient to get off when the wind was strong and fair. The rapid pace
then brought us to Ehingen, the village I had marked on the map for this
night's rest. But now we came there it was found to be _too soon_--I
could not stop for the day with such a splendid breeze inviting
progress; nor would it do to leave the boat on the bank and go to the
village to eat, for it was too far from the river, and so the current
and sails must hurry us on as before.
Now and then I asked some gazing agriculturist on the bank where the
nearest houses were, but he never could understand that I meant
_nearest, and also close to the river_; so the end of every discussion
was that he said, "Ya vol," which means in Yankee tongue, "That's so";
in Scottish, "Hoot, aye"; in Irish, "Troth, an' it is"; and in French,
"C'est vrai"; but then none of this helps one a bit.
I therefore got first ravenous and then faint, and after mounting the
bank to see the turns of the river in advance, I actually fell asleep
under a tree. The wind had quite subsided when I awoke, and then quaffed
deep draughts of water and paddled on.
The banks were now of yellow mud, and about eight or ten feet high,
quite straight up from the water, just like those on the Nile, and
several affluent streams ran from the plain to join the river. Often,
indeed, I saw a church tower right ahead, and laboured along to get
there, but after half-a-mile the stream would turn sharp round to one
side, and still more and more round, and at last the tower once in front
was directly behind us. The explanation of this tormenting peculiarity
was simply this,--that the villages were carefully built _away_ from the
river bank because it is a bad foundation, and is washed away as new
channels are formed by the flood.
When the light began to fail I took a good look at the map, and
serpentine bends were marked on it plain enough indeed, but only in
one-half of their actual number; and, moreover, I saw that in the forest
we had now entered there would be no suitable villages at all. The
overhanging trees made a short twilight soon deepen into night; and to
add to the interest the snags suddenly became numerous, and some of them
waved about in the current, as they do on the Upper Mississippi, when
the tenacious mud holds down the roots merely by its weight. All this
made it necessary to paddle slowly and with great caution, and to cross
always to the slack side of the stream instead of by one's usual course,
which, in descending, is to keep with the rapid current.
Sometimes I had to back out of shallows which were invisible in the
dark, and often I stopped a long time before a glance of some ripple
obscurely told me the probable course. The necessity for this caution
will be evident when it is remembered that in case of an upset here
_both_ sets of clothes would have been wet together, and without any
house at hand to dry them.
All at once I heard a bell toll quite near me in the thick wood, and I
came to the bank, but it was impossible to get ashore on it, so I passed
that place too, and finally made up my mind to sleep in the boat, and
soon had all sorts of plans in course of devising.
Just then two drops of rain came on my nose, and I resolved at once to
stop, for if my clothes got wet before I was snug in the canoe there
would be little comfort all night, without anything solid to eat since
morning, and all my cigars already puffed away.
As I now cautiously searched for some root projecting from the bank to
make fast to, a light appeared straight in front, and I dashed forward
with the boat to reach it, and speedily ran her into a strange sort of
lake or pond, where the stream ceased, and a noise on the boat's side
told of weeds, which proved to be large round leaves on the surface,
like those of the Victoria Regia lily.
I drew up the boat on shore, and mounted the high bank through a
thicket, carrying my long paddle as a protection against the large dogs
which farmhouses sport here, and which might be troublesome to quarrel
with in the dark. The house I came to on the top of the precipice had
its window lighted, and several people were talking inside, so I
knocked loudly, and all was silence. Then I knocked again, and whined
out that I was a poor benighted "Englander," and hoped they would let me
in, at which melancholy tale they burst out laughing, and so did I!
After an argument between us, which was equally intelligible on both
sides, a fat farmer cautiously took the light upstairs, and, opening a
window, thrust the candle forward, and gazed out upon me standing erect
as a true Briton, and with my paddle, too, but in reality a humiliated
vagrant begging for a night's lodging.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
After due scrutiny he pulled in his head and his candle, shut the
window, and fell to laughing immoderately. At this I was glad, for I
never found it difficult to get on with a man who begins in good humour.
Presently the others went up, and I stood their gaze unflinchingly, and,
besides, made an eloquent appeal in the vernacular--mine, not theirs, be
it clearly understood.
Finally they were satisfied that I was alone, and, though probably mad,
yet not quite a match for all of them, so they came down gallantly; but
then there was the difficulty of persuading the man to grope down to the
river on this dark night to carry up a boat.
With some exertion we got it up by a better way, and safely locked it in
the cowhouse of another establishment, and there I was made thoroughly
comfortable. They said they had nothing to eat but kirchwasser, bread,
and eggs, and how many eggs would I like? so I said, "To begin with,
ten," and I ate them every one. By this time the priest had come; they
often used to send for the _prester_ to do the talk. The large room soon
got full, and the sketch-book was passed round, and an India-rubber band
made endless merriment for the smaller fry, all in the old routine, the
very mention of which it may be tedious to hear of so often, as indeed
it was to me to perform.
But then in each case it was _their_ first time of going through the
performance, and they were so kind and courteous one could not refuse to
please such people. The priest was very communicative, and we tried to
converse in Latin, for my German was not good enough for him nor his
French for me. But we soon agreed that it was a long time since our
schoolboy Latin days, though I recollect having had long conversations
in Latin with a monk at Nazareth, but there we had ten days together,
and so had time to practise.
Thus ended the 1st of September, the only occasion on which I had to
"rough it" at all during the voyage; and even then, it may be seen, the
very small discomforts were all the results of gross want of prudence on
my own part, and ended merely by a hard day's work with breakfast and
dinner merged into a late supper. My bill here was 3_s._ 6_d._, the day
before, 4_s._ 6_d._, including always wine and luxuries.