Part 3

Four days are gone by, and I have spent half a day at Chalon, and one at Lyons, the "silk city." In this last half a day, I saw more manufactories than I ever saw in one town. It is said that machines to the enormous power of two hundred horse, are in some of these factories. From 50 to 60,000 hands are engaged in manufacturing silk daily. This is a very rich looking city, and must indeed, be very rich. It is no doubt an older city than Paris. If a man was brought here blindfolded, after beholding its magnificence and wealth, he might easily be led to believe he was at the Capitol of France.

Another day is gone, and finds me not less fleeting. I am away up the Rhone, at "_Aix le Bain_." This romantic little town of a few thousand inhabitants, has the celebrity of chronology of 700 years before the Christian era. It points to some warm baths, which it is named after, as its grey hairs; and of which was its phoenix. The Romans built it up on account of its feasibility of becoming a "national bath tub" of Gaul. Under the ground, as far as the ambition of a Roman chooses to go, these baths could be made profitable. There are now from eight to ten stone walled rooms, where all a man has to do to put the bath in readiness, is to open the door.

Some 200 or 300 Frenchmen were here passing away the summer, enjoying themselves fishing, dancing and gaming, for there is a very rich bank in a splendid Casino, to draw that class of France that live on excitement, I saw one American here who was broke. He wanted to relate his misfortunes to me, but I did not wish to hear them, as I was well posted before he tried to post me.

I am intercepted on all sides, as I step off the steps of the hotel, by donkey boys, who are indeed anxious to have me take a ride to a little old city not far away, but in Savoy. It is impossible to tell a good donkey from a bad one by his looks, and each boy assures me that his donkey is the best in Aix. By way of proving it to me, he gives me the word of an American that rode him the summer before; but were I an Englishman instead of what he took me to be, he would have had other testimonials more influential. But what these little good natured plagues say is true, so far as the words of their patrons are to be trusted; it would be very indecorous to ride his little donkey three or four miles and have the little owner to run along behind all the time and whip and beat the poor donkey, and then get off and walk in without saying he was a "good donkey," "the best you ever saw." That pleases the little fellows. His donkey is worth 5 or $6, and to run down his little stock, would be no part of a gentleman.

August is not yet gone, but I am a long way from Paris. Here I am, at the "City of Watches," Geneva, and lake Leman. Never did a better opportunity present itself to man, to make a good impression, than this beautiful day presents Geneva to me, her visitor. Not a cloud intervenes to Mount Blanc's snow clad peak, fifty odd miles away, and it looks as if it was merely over yonder hill, to the right of Byron's house, which is not two miles away. It reminds me of a still cloud, over a sun-set that indicates fair weather to-morrow. As Mount Blanc is covered with snow here in August, it makes another mountain of a lesser height that lies between here and Mount Blanc, appear as if its top was painted red. Mount Blanc, standing beyond, with her white capped peak, through the intervening heat of this hot day, the small one may well resemble a fiery painted mountain. This is the edge of Switzerland, and still the French is the prevalent language, which language seems destined to be universal throughout Europe.

After looking over some of the watch factories, I went to Mount Blanc on horses, and stayed two days at the a city at its base, and went across the country to Vevey, a small town on lake Leman. To my astonishment I saw two Americans here. One was Dr. Elliot, of Louisville, Ky., and the other Mr. N., of New Orleans. The old Dr. was very glad to see me. He and I had been sick companions together on the steamship Africa, where and when we both wished that we had never heard of Europe, but now that we were out of the slough, and traveling over the Republican land of Wm. Tell in the very best health and spirits, and like the roe and buck, we were happy in these Highlands.

Vevey is a very handsomely situated village, one would not forget it after seeing its picturesque groups of vineyards and rustic huts, interspersed with fairy-like palaces. It is a lively little place, and a great many English and rich Switzers come here in the dog days of summer.

After staying at Vevey a couple of days, I hired a carriage and plodded on over this hilly land to Switzerland's Capital, Bern. Bern is a very dull looking place, and most especially so for a Capitol. The second story of the houses hang over the pavement, so you can walk the town without getting wet. The language generally is German, so you see the close alliance of languages in Switzerland.

Five days more; I am in the Great Oberland, among the towering Alps. I traversed the whole of the valley of Interlaken, to the almost hidden village of Interlaken. The hotels are all small, generally not more than ten rooms, and are called pensions; queer name to create an appetite with.

English come here in summer for cheap living; there is also some Americans with patience enough to stay a short time and strengthen their means, that are most too frequently consumed at Paris, Brussels, or Vienna. As you leave the village to take a tour in a carriage up the great valley, you pass the ruins of an ancient castle, which once was the court of an ancient and noble race, whose ancestors are not to be traced, whose names was Unspunnin. A young knight belonging to another court scaled the walls and stole away Ida, the last male descendant's daughter, and made her his bride. Many years of bloody strife followed, after which the young knight came forth to Burkard, the lord of this castle and father of Ida, with his infant son in his arms and offered himself up, when the old man went into tears and made Rudolph's infant son heir of his numerous estates.

Farther up the valley a place is pointed out where a great murder was committed, and a noble young knight was the doer of the deed. He could never rest afterwards, so he fled from the sight of man, and has never been heard of since. In the immense vallies of perpetual glaciers, the snow has lain for thousands of years, and where the mountains drip upon the glaciers below, crevasses are made through and under. It is supposed that this knight crept into one of these and there froze up his heart, unseen by father, mother, sister, brother, friend or acquaintance.

This part of Switzerland is unlike any other part. It is nothing but mountains and small lakes. The lakes are as apt to be found on the tops of mountains as in vallies. From these large basins of water on top of mountains, are crevasses running through side rocks, and falling off makes the crevasses through and under the glaciers as I have described.

But here is a specimen of the intelligence of the Switzers of olden time. It is a little old town with a wall round it, and a hill close up to the wall all round. The walls could have done no more good than the hill if there was any spunk in the builders. The lake of Lucern comes up to this bigoted little spot. Its appelation is in honor of this important lake of catfish and suckers. It has a piece of art, too, a lion sculptured in the side of a rock outside the walls. It is the most natural artificial lion I ever saw. Here is Zurich, the prettiest city in Switzerland, notwithstanding Byron's praise of Geneva. Here is the famed "Zurich waters." The people here have not that staring stupidity so characteristic of the Swiss in other towns. They are all going along about their business as if they had lived among strangers all their lives. It is a thriving town, and they manufacture silks here on quite an extensive scale. In conclusion, Switzerland is a Republic, and all parts, except the ruggedest mountains, is in the highest state of cultivation. Wine and wheat are among their chief studies. They are devout christians. Every mile of their highways there is an image of the Son of Mary hung high up by the roadside, denoting his suffering, patience and forbearance. The Swiss are not a homely people. Their country is too mountainous for railroads.

SPICY TOWNS IN GERMANY.

Having passed over the borders of Switzerland and Germany, and through the first German town, called Friedsburg, I will linger a while at Strasborg. It was once the Capitol of many provinces. In times gone by, many centuries ago, it was called the Roman's "Argentoratum," and experienced more than a few of the miseries of war. The tallest piece of monumental art the world ever had recorded on the pages of its Chronology, not even the Tower of Babel excepted, is here in this city of over two thousand years old. Its name is the Munster, and ought to have been Monster. It is a Church, and was three hundred years in process of erection. It is 474 feet from the earth, and to give a clearer perception of its height, it is 24 feet higher than the Pyramids of Egypt. In it is that famous clock, made three hundred years ago, which runs yet. This clock might justly have an other half added to its name, _clock_. Many people flock there every day to see its manoeuvres. At 12 o'clock, or a few minutes before twelve, wooden men, representing the Apostles or Priests, come out of the clock, and some inferior personages also, and march a short distance and waits a few minutes to be warned of the hour, then this waited for moment is signalized by a brass cock coming out of the clock on the other side, which flaps its wings three times and crows, after which this group of old men returns to their vestry of study or seclusion, and the clock clicks on as it has done for three hundred years, and the crowd disperses.

The streets are crowded with soldiers, as in Paris, and the ladies go about the streets holding up their dresses just the right height to attract attention.

The rain is over, and there is no more attraction in the spicy town of Strasborg, so I am going to Baden Baden, the spiciest gambling place in Europe. In the Park is a great large building in the shape of a country stable, but full of splendor, called a Casino or conversation room, and this conspicuous appellation is conspicuously written on the front of the building. In this open hall--open to all--is gambling hours between each meal. The great gambling table is in the centre with numerous stools, such as are to be found in Stuarts, or any other fashionable Dry Goods store in America. On these stools are all classes of society that like excitement--dukes, earls, marquises, barons, knights, valets, and even liveried coachmen, betting from 5 francs to 10,000 francs. While I was in the Casino the Prince of Prussia broke the bank. Only thirty thousand francs is allowed in the Bank at once, and if broken no more business or amusement goes on that day in that Cassino; but there are others dealing on the same platform.

It is quite amusing to see the anxiety written on the brow of players, and to see the expression of disinterested persons, which we in America term "stuck on the game." I have seen more excruciating pain come from an outsider by the loss of some pile of gold, than I ever saw come from the expression of the loser. Here comes a Count who has been betting and losing on another bank, and he came to change his luck. He threw down his last thousand and it won; he let it all stand on the red, and this time it all goes into the bank. He exclaims, "that's my luck." Then the outsiders would cast an eye of pity on him, and say, he might have known that he would lose it, when the very reason they were not betting, was, they were broke on the same bank perhaps a week ago. I see six beautiful noble ladies betting, with their money snugly piled up before them. Their bets generally range from twenty to one hundred francs. But the most amusing part of this crowd's entertainment is, the airs that the money scampers put on. If a lady or gentleman should win, he pays it with an air of nonchalence and great pleasure; but if he wins, which he is sure to do in the end, he looks very melancholy, as if it were the result of accident, and in his opinion it was very vulgar for the bank to win. I put down a five franc piece, it won; I let the ten stand, it won; I let the twenty stand, it won; I moved it, and it lost, and I quit. He attempted to console me by saying I ought to have let it stand where it was, "what do you bet on now sir," said he; I don't bet any more said I, I have already lost five francs. He took me to be a green Yankee and said no more to me. Another amusing sight was there; it was two more broken American youths, who said they were waiting for Mr. Peabody to forward them money, and was "sound on the borry." I did'nt pride myself much here on my nationality, lest I would have some unprofitable fame. One of them owed two weeks' board in the British Hotel. He was mighty polite when he met me in company, and placed me under the truly painful necessity of being introduced to some person of note whom he had himself been a bore upon. He asked me if I was acquainted with the Grand Duke, at the same time looking over the heads of the players, as if he would call him if he could only get his eye on him. Then he insisted on my going down to the other Bank, where the chances were better, and where the Grand Duke of Baden would most likely be. I declined all invitations, and got a carriage and went out of town to see the ruins of the Erhreinstein Castle.

Having returned and paid my bill, I left this little German town to go to Heidelburg, where once dwelled a good Castilian, Frederick the 1st, of the Palatinate.

James lived between Baden Baden and Heidelberg two or three years, and wrote the two following novels, which gives a better history of these, the Castles of Heidelberg and Erhreinstein, than any other history gives or can be obtained at present. He lived at Carlsruth. The Grand Duke lives at Baden Baden, and Carlsruth, and Heidelberg, and he is here now at Heidelberg, and was here when my American friend was hunting him in the Casino.

Tilly, the great French general, blew up the front side of this castle in 1620, since which all its magnificence has been known but as tradition. The picture gallery still remains perfect, that is to say, some wings of it. There is many talented artists now grouped about in its rural halls, for the grass has grown up in them, taking copies of these splendid pictures. The city of Heidelberg which this castle overlooks, is quite a large city for a German interior town. I was told by my landlord that its population was upwards of 60,000. The cellar of the old ruins still contains its wine casks. I saw one cask or vat said to hold 60,000 bottles of wine. Ten men can dine round a King Arthur's round table on its head. In the cellar is the statue of one of King Frederick's fools, with one side of his face painted green and one half of his hair red, whilst the other is not. He drank eighteen bottles of wine each day and lived one hundred years. Father Matthew never heard of that juice of such admirable longevity, or it would have clapped the cap on his spouting eloquence. German towns are spicy towns. Outside of the city, just across the Necker, is to be two duels to-day with short swords, and they fight duels on that duelling ground every day, either students or other citizens. It is considered a small gladiatorial arena. The Grand Duke is about to leave for Carlsruth, and the people are parading with great glee. Children women and men are crowding the gates in solid batallions; you would think old Zack had come to town.

I am dizzy with reflections of these fast little towns of Germany. As I whirl along now towards the cradle of the Rothschild's my brain is rocking its reflective matter from the canton of the quiet and religious Swiss here to the burghers of this profane people. But here I am, in the independent little territory of the Duchess of Darmstadt. Each mile-post is painted barber-pole style. This Duchess is better known as the Duchess of Nassau. The cars stopped at Darmstadt, and if a good big southern barber's shop had been here the people all would have gone in it instead of Darmstadt by mistake. The gates are barberified in its style of designation.

I saw an American looking out of the cars at these posts until he felt his beard. All at once he threw himself back in his seat, as if he thought the country was too dull to look at, and of course impossible to produce anything sharp enough to take off beards.

Frankfort may be strictly termed the capitol of Germany; because all the German Princes meet here once a year and hold a conference on the great topics of interest to the whole German people. This gathering is called the Diet. This Diet enacts for the German principalities, some of the most wholesome and sound logical laws that comes from the parliament of any nation of these modern times. Frankfort has produced the most sagacious merchants the world ever knew. I have just been to look at Goethe's house. It has stood the scathing weather of the main for five hundred years, but none of the calamities of time have laid their fingers upon it, save a slight decay.

"Frankfort on the Oder" must not be misconstrued so as to convey an idea of this Frankfort. This is generally designated as Frankfort on the Main. It is a town full of high spirited people, and lively as crickets, but less sedate. Business is always good here. Each man is in some degree possessed with the ambition of a Rothschild. I am going to see the house of the primitive Rothschild, and then off to the Rhine.

Here I am at Mainz, on the banks of the Rhine. Looking at my ticket down the Rhine, I see this is the 17th of September, but the weather indicates summer time. This old, dead, but vast town, has the distinction allotted to it of producing the first book printer.

I will not attempt, as most chroniclers, to describe the impression the legend river of Europe made on me; suffice it to say that, on every peak, and that is saying a good deal, is the ruins of tyrants, and every hole that is made through these turrets, sends out a woeful wisp of a "Blue Beard's wrath," that quickens the pulse of a modern civilian.

I am now in town, at a great hotel, called Disch. Here is a very old city, and in old times Roman emperors were proclaimed here. The wife of Germanicus, Aggrippa, the mother of the tyrant that "fiddled" whilst Rome was burning, was born here. In this city is a church which has already cost four millions of florins, and is not finished yet. In this church is one of the most imposing pieces of splendor the eye of man ever gazed on. Inside of this case of jewels is three skulls filled with jewels. They glitter about in the nose and eyes and ears like moving maggots, and causes man to gaze with amazement upon the peculiarities of the people of German towns. Its name is Cologne. Its modern merit is its production of Colognes, not little towns, but the fluid possessing requisite qualifications of admittance to the private apartment of the sweetest virgin.

I must now bring this chapter to a close and go down among the Dutch.

DOWN AMONG THE DUTCH.

Having been disappointed in seeing a magnificent city, and smelling one, I am rapidly running down the Rhine to the Netherlands--Holland among the Dutch. These boats are hardly worth mentioning, more than to say they have steam and a crew. The crew are very stupid looking; mind you I say stupid looking, but I don't mean to say they are stupid. They have nothing to say or do with the passengers. They don't leave their watch and come to the cabin to sit a minute and talk with passengers, and occasionally "take a hand" at a game, as they do on our inferior boats running the Yazoo, Arkansas, Red and Black River, until the boiler hisses, or the boat snags. They are slow but sure.

In the cabin, which is below, is a sufficient number of small tables in restaurant style, and whoever eats does it _a la carte_. If you eat what is worth only fifteen grochens, you only pay fifteen grochens; but, if you eat one hundred grochens' worth, you will pay one hundred grochens; not one cent over or under is required, for the Dutch, as a class, are a reasonable, just and inoffensive people, therefore wish nothing but fair understanding and dealing. They always keep an interpreter on a cheap scale, to enable them to get along without difficulty. He was either a waiter, dish washer or potato-peeler, but on a no more expensive scale. They are the last people I am acquainted with to count unhatched chickens.

Captain Husenhork, I understand, is a gentleman and a good humored man, but the eye of a lynx would have a task to catch a smile upon his hickory countenance. He brought an old Dutch musket on deck for me to amuse myself with, shooting at snipe along the dykes. I shot into their midst several times, but they all flew up, circled around and lit at the same place. I never before saw so many of this style or genera of bird. Their bills was the most conspicuous part of them.

The boat is now turning to land at a pretty large town called Arnheim; but Holland is so low that a man cannot see the spires of a city until he enters its walls.

Holland is one vast marsh. It is dyked so as to drain each acre, but it is the richest soil in Europe, and its productiveness is so profitable that its owners would not swop it for the land of Goshen. It has nourished a people that seem to be well adapted to its nature; the forbearance of the Dutch people is not to be equalled by any. The labor required to till such soil as Holland's, has been the best friend to the Hollanders, for no people on the earth enjoys the labor as does a Holland farmer, and no people could make it so profitable. In taking a hack ride a few miles in the country around Arnheim, I can say the nurseries are unsurpassed by Switzerland, the Hanse States, or France.

Having gossiped in Arnheim two days, I called for my bill, paid it, packed my trunk for Amsterdam. Wine being such an extravagant item I thought I would enquire into it, as I might get some information why it was so much more in Holland than the other parts of the Rhine. I found that wine was an imported liquor, consequently, the duty made the difference between wine on that side of the Rhine and the other. A swilly beer is most universally the beverage of the Netherlands. The clerk supposing that I was not satisfied with the length of my bill, took it in his inspection and examined it carefully, and said, "Sir, you eat snipe." "Well is that any reason you should make my bill like a snipes?" "Yes sir," said he, "it is extra." "All right, sir, I did not ask you about any part of the bill except wine." Next day I was in Amsterdam, the wealthiest city of Holland. It is a city of canals; they run through all the main parts of the town, leaving a large side-walk on each side. Some pretty large ships are in the heart of the town. Bridges run across the canals, but they revolve on hinges and are easily turned.