Part 11

The situation was still sufficiently serious. The rocks could not be left go for a moment, and the blood was spurting out of more than twenty cuts. The most serious ones were in the head, and I vainly tried to close them with one hand while holding on with the other. It was useless: the blood jerked out in blinding jets at each pulsation. At last, in a moment of inspiration, I kicked out a big lump of snow and stuck it as a plaster on my head. The idea was a happy one, and the flow of blood diminished: then, scrambling up, I got, not a moment too soon, to a place of safety and fainted away. The sun was setting when consciousness returned, and it was pitch dark before the Great Staircase was descended; but by a combination of luck and care the whole four thousand eight hundred feet of descent to Breuil was accomplished without a slip or once missing the way.

I slunk past the cabin of the cowherds, who were talking and laughing inside, utterly ashamed of the state to which I had been brought by my imbecility, and entered the inn stealthily, wishing to escape to my room unnoticed. But Favre met me in the passage, demanded, "Who is it?" screamed with fright when he got a light, and aroused the household. Two dozen heads then held solemn council over mine, with more talk than action. The natives were unanimous in recommending that hot wine (syn. vinegar), mixed with salt, should be rubbed into the cuts. I protested, but they insisted. It was all the doctoring they received. Whether their rapid healing was to be attributed to that simple remedy or to a good state of health, is a question; they closed up remarkably soon, and in a few days I was able to move again....

As it seldom happens that one survives such a fall, it may be interesting to record what my sensations were during its occurrence. I was perfectly conscious of what was happening, and felt each blow, but, like a patient under chloroform, experienced no pain. Each blow was, naturally, more severe than that which preceded it, and I distinctly remember thinking, "Well, if the next is harder still, that will be the end!" Like persons who have been rescued from drowning, I remember that the recollection of a multitude of things rushed through my head, many of them trivialities or absurdities which had been forgotten long before; and, more remarkable, this bounding through space did not feel disagreeable. But I think that in no very great distance more consciousness as well as sensation would have been lost, and upon that I base my belief, improbable as it seems, that death by a fall from a great height is as painless an end as can be experienced.

The battering was very rough, yet no bones were broken. The most severe cuts were, one four inches long on the top of the head, and another of three inches on the right temple; this latter bled frightfully. There was a formidable-looking cut, of about the same size as the last, on the palm of the left hand, and every limb was grazed or cut more or less seriously. The tips of the ears were taken off, and a sharp rock cut a circular bit out of the side of the left boot, sock, and ankle at one stroke. The loss of blood, although so great, did not seem to be permanently injurious. The only serious effect has been the reduction of a naturally retentive memory to a very commonplace one; and although my recollections of more distant occurrences remain unshaken, the events of that particular day would be clean gone but for the few notes which were written down before the accident.

A TYPICAL DUTCH CITY.

EDMONDO DE AMICIS.

[De Amicis, a traveller of Italian birth, has given us a number of highly interesting records of travel, including works on Algeria, Spain, Holland, Paris, Constantinople, etc. Among these, "Holland and its People" is perhaps the most entertaining, and as a specimen of its manner we select from it the description of Rotterdam, as a typical example of a Dutch city. This selection is from the translation by Caroline Tilton, published by G. P. Putnam's Sons.]

When we arrived in sight of Rotterdam it rained and was foggy; we could see, as through a veil, only an immense confusion of ships, houses, windmills, towers, trees, and people in motion on the dykes and bridges; there were lights everywhere; a great city with such an aspect as I had never seen before, and which fog and darkness soon hid from me altogether. When I had taken leave of my travelling companions, and had put my luggage in order, it was night. "So much the better," I thought, as I entered a carriage; "I shall see the first Dutch city by night, which must be a strange spectacle." And, indeed, when M. Bismarck was at Rotterdam he wrote to his wife that at night he saw spectres on the roofs.

It is difficult to make much of the city of Rotterdam, entering it at night. The carriage passed almost immediately over a bridge that resounded hollowly beneath it; and while I thought myself, and was, in fact, within the city, I saw with amazement on my right and left two rows of ships vanishing in the gloom.

Leaving the bridge, we passed through a street, lighted, and full of people, and found ourselves upon another bridge, and between two rows of vessels as before, and so on from bridge to street, from street to bridge, and, to increase the confusion, an illumination of lamps at the corners of houses, lanterns on masts of ships, light-houses on the bridges, small lights under the houses, and all these lights reflected in the water. All at once the carriage stopped, people crowded about; I looked out and saw a bridge in the air. In answer to my question, some one said that a vessel was passing. We went on again, seeing a perspective of canals and bridges crossing and recrossing each other, until we came to a great square, sparkling with lights, and bristling with masts of ships, and finally we reached our inn in an adjacent street.

My first care on entering my room was to see whether Dutch cleanliness deserved its fame. It did, indeed, and may be called the religion of cleanliness. The linen was snow-white, the windows transparent as the air, the furniture shining like a crystal, the floors so clean that a microscope could not discover a black speck. There was a basket for waste paper, a tablet for scratching matches, a dish for cigar-ashes, a box for cigar-stumps, a spittoon, and a boot-jack; in short, there was no possible pretext for soiling anything.

My room examined, I spread a map of Rotterdam upon the table, and made some preparatory studies for the morrow.

It is a singular thing that the great cities of Holland, although built upon a shifting soil, and amid difficulties of every kind, have all great regularity of form. Amsterdam is a semicircle, the Hague square, Rotterdam an equilateral triangle. The base of the triangle is an immense dyke, which defends the city from the Meuse, and is called the Boompjes, signifying, in Dutch, small trees, from a row of little elms, now very tall, that were planted when it was first constructed.

Another great dyke forms a second bulwark against the river, which divides the city into two almost equal parts, and from the middle of the left side to the opposite angle. That part of Rotterdam which is comprised between the dykes is all canals, islands, and bridges, and is the new city; that which extends beyond the second dyke is the old city. Two great canals extend along the other two sides of the town to the apex, where they meet, and receive the waters of the river Rotte, which, with the affix of _dam_, or dyke, gives its name to the city.

Having thus fulfilled my conscientious duty as a traveller, and with many precautions not to soil, even by a breath, the purity of that jewel of a chamber, I abandoned myself with humility to my first Dutch bed.

Dutch beds--I speak of those in the hotels--are generally short and wide, and occupied, in a great part, by an immense feather pillow in which a giant's head would be overwhelmed. I may add that the ordinary light is a copper candlestick, of the size of a dinner-plate, which might sustain a torch, but holds, instead, a tiny candle about the size of a Spanish lady's finger.

In the morning I made haste to rise and issue forth into the strange streets, unlike anything in Europe. The first I saw was the Hoog Straat, a long, straight thoroughfare, running along the interior dyke.

The unplastered houses, of every shade of brick, from the darkest red to light rose-color, chiefly two windows wide and two stories high, have the front wall rising above and concealing the roof, and in the shape of a blunt triangle surmounted by a parapet. Some of these pointed façades rise into two curves, like a long neck without a head; some are cut into steps like the houses that children build with blocks; some present the aspect of a conical pavilion, some of a village church, some of theatrical cabins. The parapets are in general surrounded by white stripes, coarse arabesques in plaster, and other ornaments in very bad taste; the doors and windows are bordered by broad white stripes; other white lines divide the different stories; the spaces between the doors in front are marked by white wooden panels, so that two colors, white and red, prevail everywhere, and as in the distance the darker red looks black, the prospect is half festive, half funereal, all the houses looking as if they were hung with white linen. At first I had an inclination to laugh, for it seemed impossible that it could have been done seriously, and that quite sober people lived in those houses. They looked as if they had been run up for a festival, and would presently disappear, like the paper frame-work of a grand display of fireworks.

While I stood looking vaguely at the street, I noticed one house that puzzled me somewhat; and, thinking that my eyes had been deceived, I looked more carefully at it, and compared it with its neighbors. Turning into the next street, the same thing met my astonished gaze. There is no doubt about it: the whole city of Rotterdam presents the appearance of a town that has been shaken smartly by an earthquake, and is on the point of falling into ruin.

All the houses--in any street one may count the exceptions on their fingers--lean more or less, but the greater part of them so much that at the roof they lean forward at least a foot beyond their neighbors, which may be straight, or not so visibly inclined; one leans forward as if it would fall into the street; another backward, another to the left, another to the right; at some points six or seven contiguous houses all lean forward together, those in the middle most, those at the ends less, looking like a paling with the crowd pressing against it. At another point two houses lean together as if supporting one another. In certain streets the houses for a long distance lean all one way, like trees beaten by a prevailing wind; and then another long row will lean in the opposite direction, as if the wind had changed. Sometimes there is a certain regularity of inclination that is scarcely noticeable; and again, at crossings and in the smallest streets there is an indescribable confusion of lines, a real architectural frolic, a dance of houses, a disorder that seems animated. There are houses that nod forward as if asleep, others that start backward as if frightened; some bending towards each other, their roofs almost touching, as if in secret conference; some falling upon one another as if they were drunk; some leaning backward between others that lean forward like malefactors dragged onward by their guards; rows of houses that courtesy to a steeple, groups of small houses all inclined towards one in the middle, like conspirators in conclave.

Observe them attentively one by one, from top to bottom, and they are interesting as pictures.

In some, upon the summit of the façade, there projects from the middle of the parapet a beam with cord and pulley to pull up baskets and buckets. In others, jutting from a round window, is the carved head of a deer, a sheep, or a goat. Under the head, a line of whitewashed stone or wood cuts the whole façade in half. Under this line there are two broad windows with projecting awnings of striped linen. Under these again, over the upper panes, a little green curtain. Below this green curtain two white ones, divided in the middle to show a suspended bird-cage or a basket of flowers. And below the basket or the cage, the lower panes are covered by a net-work of fine wire that prevents the passer-by from seeing into the room. Within, behind the netting, there stands a table covered with objects in porcelain, crystal, flowers, and toys of various kinds. Outside on the stone sill is a row of small flower-pots. From the stone sill or from one side projects an iron stem curving upward, which sustains two small mirrors joined in the form of a book, movable, and surmounted by another, also movable, so that those inside the house can see, without being seen, everything that passes in the street.

On some of the houses there is a lamp projecting between the two windows, and below is the door of the house or a shop door. If it is a shop, over the door there is the carved head of a Moor with his mouth wide open, or that of a Turk with a hideous grimace; sometimes there is an elephant or a goose; sometimes a horse's or a bull's head, a serpent, a half-moon, a windmill, or an arm extended, the hand holding some object of the kind sold in the shop. If it is the house-door,--always kept closed,--there is a brass plate with the name of the occupant, another with a slit for letters, another with the handle of a bell, the whole, including the locks and bolts, shining like gold. Before the door there is a small bridge of wood, because in many of the houses the ground-floor or basement is much lower than the street; and before the bridge two little stone columns surmounted by two balls; two more columns in front of these are united by iron chains, the large links of which are in the form of crosses, stars, and polygons; in the space between the street and the house are pots of flowers; and at the windows of the ground-floor more flower-pots and curtains. In the more retired streets there are bird-cages on both sides of the windows, boxes full of green growing things, clothes hung out to air or dry, a thousand objects and colors, like a universal fair.

But without going out of the older town, one need only to go away from the centre to see something new at every step.

In some narrow, straight streets one may see the end suddenly closed as if by a curtain concealing the view; but it disappears as it came, and is recognized as the sail of a vessel moving in a canal. In other streets a net-work of cordage seems to stop the way; the rigging of vessels lying in some basin. In one direction there is a drawbridge raised, and looking like a gigantic swing provided for the diversion of the people who live in those preposterous houses; and in another there is a windmill, tall as a steeple and black as an antique tower, moving its arms like a monstrous firework. On every side, finally, among the houses, above the roofs, between the distant trees, are seen masts of vessels, flags, and sails and rigging, reminding us that we are surrounded by water, and that the city is a seaport.

Meantime, the shops were opened and the streets became full of people. There was great animation, but no hurry, the absence of which distinguishes the streets of Rotterdam from those of London, between which some travellers find great resemblance, especially in the color of the houses and the grave aspect of the inhabitants. White faces, pallid faces, faces the color of Parmesan cheese; light hair, very light hair, reddish, yellowish; broad beardless visages, beards under the chin and around the neck; blue eyes, so light as to seem almost without a pupil; women stumpy, fat, rosy, slow, with white caps and ear-rings in the form of corkscrews,--these are the first things one observes in the crowd.

But for the moment it was not the people that first stimulated my curiosity. I crossed the Hoog Street, and found myself in the new city. Here it is impossible to say if it be port or city, if land or water predominate, if there are more ships than houses, or _vice versa_.

Broad and long canals divide the city into so many islands, united by drawbridges, turning bridges, and bridges of stone. On either side of every canal extends a street, flanked by trees on one side and houses on the other. All these canals are deep enough to float large vessels, and all are full of them from one end to the other, except a space in the middle left for passage in and out,--an immense fleet imprisoned in a city.

When I arrived it was the busiest hour, so I planted myself upon the highest bridge over the principal crossing. From thence were visible four canals, four forests of ships, bordered by eight files of trees; the streets were crammed with people and merchandise; droves of cattle were crossing the bridges; bridges were rising in the air, or opening in the middle, to allow vessels to pass through, and were scarcely replaced or closed before they were inundated by a throng of people, carts, and carriages; ships came and went in the canals, shining like models in a museum, and with the wives and children of the sailors on the decks; boats darted from vessel to vessel; the shops drove a busy trade; servant-women washed the walls and windows; and all this moving life was rendered more gay and cheerful by the reflections in the water, the green of the trees, the red of the houses, the tall windmills showing their dark tops and white sails against the azure of the sky, and still more by an air of quiet simplicity not seen in any other northern city.

I took observations of a Dutch vessel. Almost all the ships crowded in the canals of Rotterdam are built for the Rhine and Holland; they have one mast only, and are broad, stout, and variously colored like toy ships. The hull is generally of a bright grass-green, ornamented with a red or a white stripe, or sometimes several stripes, looking like a band of different-colored ribbons. The poop is usually gilded. The deck and mast are varnished and shining like the cleanest of house-floors. The outside of the hatches, the buckets, the barrels, the yards, the planks, are all painted red, with white or blue stripes. The cabin where the sailors' families are is colored like a Chinese kiosk, and has its windows of clear glass, and its white muslin curtains tied up with knots of rose-colored ribbon. In every moment of spare time sailors, women, and children are busy washing, sweeping, polishing every part with infinite care and pains; and when their little vessel makes its exit from the port, all fresh and shining like a holiday-coach, they all stand on the poop and accept with dignity the mute compliments which they gather from the glances of the spectators along the canals.

From canal to canal, and from bridge to bridge, I finally reached the dyke of the Boompjes upon the Meuse, where boils and bubbles all the life of the great commercial city.

On the left extends a long row of small many-colored steamboats, which start every hour in the day for Dordrecht, Arnhem, Gouda, Schiedam, Brilla, Zealand, and continually send forth clouds of white smoke and the sound of their cheerful bells. To the right lie the large ships which make the voyage to various European ports, mingled with fine three-masted vessels bound for the East Indies, with names written in golden letters,--Java, Sumatra, Borneo, Samarang,--carrying the fancy to those distant and savage countries like the echoes of distant voices. In front the Meuse, covered with boats and barks, and the distant shore with a forest of beech-trees, windmills, and towers; and over all the unquiet sky, full of gleams of light and gloomy clouds, fleeting and changing in their constant movement, as if repeating the restless labor on the earth below.

ANTWERP AND ITS PEOPLE.

ROSE G. KINGSLEY.

[The traveller to whom we owe the following selection makes it part of a paper on "The Home of Rubens," in which she appreciatively describes that artist's works. Her account of the city in which the greatest of these works are enshrined is more to our purpose, and is here given.]

It had rained in England for a month without stopping, when, weary of sodden gray clouds above and sodden green grass below, M---- and I determined to seek new sketching-grounds under a more kindly sky. We had but a fortnight to spend on our trip. Where, therefore, could we find a richer field of work than in Flanders? for there quaint cities, beautiful buildings, glorious pictures, and, if we were minded to go deeper, a tangled mass of historic interest, lay within easy reach.

Thus it came to pass that the 30th of September found us driving through the streets of Brussels, and three days later we were steaming out into the (to us) unknown, on our way to Antwerp. Our three days had been chiefly spent in making closer acquaintance with Flemish art in the museum of the capital,--a collection most valuable and typical, a collection too often ignored or hastily glanced through by the tourist, who, if by chance he cares for such things, hurries on to see Memling at Bruges, Van Eyck at Ghent, or Rubens at Antwerp. He forgets, or does not know, that, as Fromentin justly says, "Belgium is a magnificent book of art, of which, happily for provincial glory, the chapters are scattered everywhere, but of which the preface is at Brussels, and only at Brussels. To all who are tempted to skip the preface in order to get at the book, I should say they are wrong,--that they open the book too soon and will read it ill." We therefore studied the preface with some care, and now were about to turn the first page of the book itself....

Everything seemed new, pretty, and amusing, as the train cleared the last of the suburbs of Brussels. The sun shone on the long lines of poplars, just burnished with autumn's gold, which cast their shadows on damp green meadows ruled off into squares with almost mathematical precision. Here a man in a brown apron and brilliant crimson sleeves was raking up the aftermath off a water-meadow. There a girl in a blue frock was herding black and white cows, and we began to think of Cuyp. Then we saw, across flat stretches of smiling country, pointed steeples and red roofs, showing behind thick groups of trees in a soft blue haze, while an old windmill on blackened wooden stilts, a little donkey-cart, and a group of crimson-jacketed peasants in the foreground made us think of some of Teniers the Younger's landscapes, and recollect that we must be close to Drei Torren, his house at Perck. Then came Malines, our first brown canal, with red-sailed, green-and black-painted barges, the great cathedral rising through a screen of trees over scarlet house-roofs, a picturesque crowd on the platform of burly shovel-hatted priests, nuns with black shawls over their white caps, men with blue blouses and brilliant yellow sabots,--and we thought of Prout. It was all so absurdly like what we had expected, with a difference,--just the difference between art and nature.

Then came more flat country, more canals, more fields, more absurd cocky little wheat-ricks, with hardly corn enough in them to make a loaf of bread, more white and purple lupins on the embankments, more red-tiled roofs, half thatch, half tile, which M---- pronounced "most æsthetic," more sun, yes, that was perhaps the best of all. Then a great green fort, and we were at Antwerp.