THE VOYAGE.

By the time I reached the Custom-house Stairs, the paddles of the Rotterdam steam-boat were actually in motion, and I had scarcely hurried across a plank, when I heard it fall splash into the muddy water which separated me farther and farther from the wharf. Still later than myself, passengers were now seen chasing the vessel in boats, and there was a confusion on deck, which I gladly availed myself of, by securing, close to the helmsman, a corner, where, muffled in the ample folds of an old boat-cloak, I felt I might quietly enjoy an incognito; for, as the sole object of my expedition was to do myself as much good and as little harm as possible, I considered it would be a pity to wear out my constitution by any travelling exclamations in the Thames.

The hatches being now opened, the huge pile of trunks, black portmanteaus, and gaudy carpet-bags which had threatened at first to obstruct my prospect was rapidly stowed away; and, as the vessel, hissing and smoking, glided, or rather scuffled, by Deptford, Greenwich, Woolwich, &c., a very motley group of fellow-passengers were all occupied in making remarks of more or less importance. Some justly prided themselves on being able to read aloud inscriptions on shore, which others had declared, from their immense distance, to be illegible;—some, bending forward, modestly asked for information; some, standing particularly upright, pompously, imparted it; at times, wondering eyes, both male and female, were seen radiating in all directions; then all were concentrated on an approaching sister steam-boat, which, steering an opposite course, soon rapidly passed us; the gilt figure at her head, the splashing of the paddles, and the name written over her stern, occasioning observations which burst into existence nearly as simultaneously as the thunder and lightning of heaven;—handkerchiefs were waved, and bipeds of both sexes seemed to be delighted, save and except one mild, gloomy, inquisitive little man, who went bleating like a lamb from one fellow-passenger to another, without getting even from me any answer to his harmless question, “whether we had or had not passed yet the men hanging in chains?”

As soon as we got below Gravesend, the small volume of life which, with feelings of good-fellowship to all men, I had thus been calmly reviewing, began to assume a graver tone; and, as page after page presented itself to my notice, I observed that notes of interrogation and marks of admiration were types not so often to be met with, as the comma, the colon—and, above all—the full stop.

The wind, as it freshened with the sun, seemed to check all exuberance of fancy; and, as the puny river-wave rose, conversation around me lulled and lulled into a dead calm. A few people, particularly some ladies, suddenly at last broke silence, giving utterance to a mass of heavy matter-of-fact ejaculations, directed rather to fishes than to men. Certain colours in the picture now began rapidly to alter—the red rose gradually looked like the lily—brown skin changed itself into dirty yellow, and I observed two heavy cheeks of warm, comfortable, fat flesh gradually assume the appearance of cold wrinkled tallow. Off Margate, a sort of hole-and-corner system very soon began to prevail, and one human being after another slowly descending heels foremost, vanished from deck into a sub-stratum, or infernal region, where there was moaning, and groaning, and gnashing of teeth; and, as head after head thus solemnly sunk from my view, I gradually threw aside the folds of my ægis, until finding myself alone, I hailed and inhaled with pleasure the cool fresh breeze which had thus caused me to be left, as I wished to be, by myself.

The gale now delightfully increased—(ages ago I had been too often exposed to it to suffer from its effect);—and, as wave after wave became tipt with white, there flitted before my mind a hundred recollections chasing one another, which I never thought to have re-enjoyed; occasionally they were interrupted by the salt spray, and as it dashed into my face, I felt my grizzled eyebrows curl themselves up, as if they wished me once again to view the world in the prismatic colours of “Auld Lang Syne.” Already was my cure half effected; and the soot of London being thus washed from my brow, I felt a reanimation of mind and a vigour of frame which made me long for the moment when, like the sun bursting from behind a cloud, I might cast aside my shadowy mantle: however, I never moved from my nook, until the darkness of night at last encouraging me, without fear of observation, to walk the deck, “I paced along upon the giddy footing of the hatches,” till tired of these vibrations, I stood for a few moments at the gangway.

There was no moon—a star only here and there was to be seen; yet, as the fire-propelled vessel cut her way, the paddles, by shivering in succession each wave to atoms, produced a phosphoric sparkling, resembling immense lanthorns at her side; and while these beacons distinctly proclaimed where the vessel actually was, a pale shining stream of light issued from her keel, which, for a ship’s length or two, told fainter and fainter where she had been.

The ideas which rush into the mind, on contemplating by night, out of sight of land, the sea, are as dark, as mysterious, as unfathomable, and as indescribable as the vast ocean itself. One sees but little,—yet that little, caught here and there, so much resembles some of the attributes of the Great Power which created us, that the mind, trembling under the immensity of the conceptions it engenders, is lost in feelings which human beings cannot impart to each other. In the hurricane which one meets with in southern latitudes, most of us have probably looked in vain for the waves which have been described to be “mountain high;” but, though the outline has been exaggerated, is there not a terror in the filling in of the picture which no human artist can delineate? and in the raging of the tempest—in the darkness which the lightning makes visible—who is there among us that has not fancied he has caught a shadow of the wrath, and a momentary glimmering of the mercy, of the Almighty?

Impressed with these hackneyed feelings, I slowly returned to my nook, and all being obscure, except just the red, rough countenance of the helmsman, feebly illuminated by the light in the binnacle, I laid myself down, and sometimes nodding a little and sometimes dozing, I enjoyed for many hours a sort of half sleep, of which I stood in no little need.

As soon as we had crossed the Briell, the vessel being at once in smooth water, the passengers successively emerged from their graves below, until, in a couple of hours, their ghastly countenances all were on deck.

A bell, as if in hysterics, now rang most violently, as a signal to the town of Rotterdam. The word of command, “STOP HER!” was loudly vociferated by a bluff, short, Dirk Hatteraick-looking pilot, who had come on board off the Briell. “Stop her!” was just heard faintly echoed from below, by the invisible exhausted sallow being who had had, during the voyage, charge of the engine. The paddles, in obedience to the mandate, ceased—then gave two turns—ceased,—turned once again—paused,—gave one last struggle, when, our voyage being over, the vessel’s side slightly bumped against the pier.

With a noise like one of Congreve’s rockets, the now useless steam was immediately exploded by the pale being below, and, in a few seconds, half the passengers were seen on shore, hurrying in different directions about a town full of canals and spirit shops.

“Compared with Greece and Italy—Holland is but a platter-faced, cold-gin-and-water country, after all!” said I to myself, as I entered the great gate of the Hôtel des Pays-Bas; “and a heavy, barge-built, web-footed race are its inhabitants,” I added, as I passed a huge amphibious wench on the stairs, who, with her stern towards me, was sluicing the windows with water: “however, there is fresh air, and that, with solitude, is all I here desire!” This frail sentimental sentence was hardly concluded, when a Dutch waiter (whose figure I will not misrepresent by calling him “garcon”) popped a long carte, or bill of fare, into my hands, which severely reproved me for having many other wants besides those so simply expressed in my soliloquy.

As I did not feel equal to appearing in public, I had dinner apart in my own room; and, as soon as I came to that part of the ceremony called dessert, I gradually raised my eyes from the field of battle, until leaning backwards in my chair to ruminate, I could not help first admiring, for a few moments, the height and immense size of an apartment, in which there seemed to be elbow-room for a giant.

Close before the window was the great river upon whose glassy surface I had often and often been a traveller; and, flowing beneath me, it occurred to me, as I sipped my wine, that in its transit, or course of existence, it had attained at Rotterdam, as nearly as possible, the same period in its life as my own. Its birth, its froward infancy, and its wayward youth, were remote distances to which even fancy could now scarcely re-transport us. In its full vigour, the Rhine had been doomed turbulently to struggle with difficulties and obstructions which had seemed almost capable of arresting it in its course; and if there was now nothing left in its existence worth admiring—if its best scenery had vanished—if its boundaries had become flat, and its banks insipid, still there was an expansion in its broader surface, and a deep-settled stillness in its course, which seemed to offer tranquillity instead of ecstasy, and perfect contentment instead of imperfect joy. I felt that in the whole course of the river there was no part of it I desired to exchange for the water flowing slowly before me; and though it must very shortly, I knew, be lost in the ocean, that great emblem of eternity, yet in every yard of its existence that fate had been foretold to it.

Not feeling disposed again so immediately to endure the confinement of a vessel, I walked out, and succeeded in hiring a carriage, which, in two days, took me to Cologne, and the following morning I accordingly embarked, at six o'clock, in a steam-boat, which was to reach Coblentz in eleven hours.

As everybody, now-a-days, has been up the Rhine, I will only say, that I started in a fog, and, for a couple of hours, was very coolly enveloped in it. My compagnons de voyage were tricolored—Dutch, German and French; and, excepting always myself, there was nothing English—nothing, at least, but a board, which sufficiently explained the hungry, insatiable inquisitiveness of our travellers. The black thing hung near the tiller, and upon it there was painted, in white letters, the following sentence, which I copied literatim:—

On account of the fog, we could see nothing, yet, once or twice, we steered towards the tinkling invitation of a bell; stopped for a moment—took in passengers, and proceeded. The manner in which these Rhine steam-vessels receive and deliver passengers, carriages, and horses, is most admirable: at each little village, the birth of a new traveller, or the death or departure of an old one, does not detain the vessel ten seconds: but the little ceremony being over, on it instantly proceeds, worming and winding its way towards its destination.

Formerly, and until lately, a few barges, towed by horses, were occasionally seen toiling against the torrent of the Rhine, while immense rafts of timber, curiously connected together, floated indolently downward to their market: in history, therefore, this uncommercial river was known principally for its violence, its difficulties, and its dangers. Excepting to the painter, its points most distinguished were those where armies had succeeded in crossing, or where soldiers had perished in vainly attempting to do so; but the power of steam, bringing its real character into existence, has lately developed peaceful properties which it was not known to have possessed. The stream which once relentlessly destroyed mankind, now gives to thousands their bread;—that which once separated nations, now brings them together;—national prejudices, which, it was once impiously argued, this river was wisely intended to maintain, are, by its waters, now softened and decomposed: in short, the Rhine affords another proof that there is nothing really barren in creation but man’s conceptions, nothing defective but his own judgment, and that what he looked upon as a barrier in Europe, was created to become one of the great pavés in the world.

As the vessel proceeded towards Coblentz, it continually paused in its fairy course, apparently to barter and traffic in the prisoners it contained—sometimes stopping off one little village, it exchanged an infirm old man for two country girls; and then, as if laughing at its bargain, gaily proceeding, it paused before another picturesque hamlet, to give three Prussian soldiers of the 36th regiment for a husband, a mother, and a child; once it delivered an old woman, and got nothing;—then, luckily, it received two carriages for a horse, and next it stopped a second to take up a tall, thin, itinerant poet, who, as soon as he had collected from every passenger a small contribution, for having recited two or three little pieces, was dropped at the next village, ready to board the steam-vessel coming down from Mainz.

In one of these cartels, or exchanges of prisoners, we received on board Sir —— and Lady ——, a young fashionable English couple, who having had occasion, a fortnight before, to go together to St-George’s Church, had (like dogs suffering from hydrophobia or tin canisters) been running straight forwards ever since. As hard as they could drive, they had posted to Dover—hurried across to Calais—thence to Brussels—snapped a glance at the ripe corn waving on the field of Waterloo,—stared at the relics of that great Saint, old Charlemagne, on the high altar of Aix-la-Chapelle, and at last sought for rest and connubial refuge at Coln; but the celebrated water of that town, having in its manufacture evidently abstracted all perfume from the atmosphere, they could not endure the dirt and smell of the place, and, therefore, had proceeded by land towards Coblentz; but, as they were changing horses at a small village, seeing our steam-boat in view, they ordered a party of peasants to draw their carriage to the banks of the river, and as soon as our vessel, which came smoking alongside, began to hiss, they, their rosy, fresh-coloured French maid, their dark, chocolate-coloured chariot, and their brown, ill-looking Italian courier, came on board.

As soon as this young London couple lightly stepped on deck, I saw, at one glance, that without at all priding themselves on their abilities, they fancied, and indeed justly fancied, that they belonged to that class of society which, in England, so modestly calls itself—good. That it was not healthy society—that its victims were exposed to late hours, crowded rooms, and impure air, was evident enough from the contrast which existed between their complexions, and that of their healthy country attendant; however, they seemed not only to be perfectly satisfied with themselves, and the clique which they had left behind them, but to have a distaste for everything else they saw. Towards some German ladies, who had slightly bowed to them as they passed, they looked with a vacant haughty stare, as if they conceived there must be some mistake, and as if, at all events, it would be necessary to keep such people off. Yet, after all, there was no great harm in these two young people: that, in the countries which they were about to visit, they would be fitted only for each other, was sadly evident; however, on the other hand, it was also evidently their wish not to extend their acquaintance. Their heads were lanthorns, illuminated with no more brains than barely sufficient to light them on their way; and so, like the babes in the wood, they sat together, hand-in-hand, regardless of everything in creation but themselves.

For running their carriage down to the shore, the brown confidential courier, whose maxim was, of course, to pay little and charge much, offered the gang of peasants some kreutzers, which amounted, in English currency, to about sixpence. This they refused, and the captain of the party, while arguing with the flint-skinning courier, was actually carried off by our steam-boat, which, like time and tide, waited for no man. The poor fellow, finding that the Italian was immoveable, came aft to the elegant English couple, who were still leaning towards each other like the Siamese boys. He pleaded his case, stated his services, declared his poverty, and, in a manly voice, prayed for redress. The dandy listened—looked at his boots, which were evidently pinching him,—listened—passed four white fingers through the curls of his jet-black hair—showed the point of a pink tongue gently playing with a front tooth, and when the vulgar story was at an end, without moving a muscle in his countenance, in a sickly tone of voice, he pronounced his verdict as follows ........ “Alley!”

The creditor tried again, but the debtor sat as silent and as inanimate as a corpse. However, all this time the steam-boat dragging the poor peasant out of his way, he protested in a few angry exclamations against the injustice with which he had been treated (a sentiment I was very sorry to hear more than once mildly whispered by many a quiet-looking German), and descending the vessel’s side into a small boat, which had just brought us a new captive, he landed at a village from which he had about eight miles to walk to join his comrades.

It is with no satirical feeling that I have related this little occurrence. To hurt the feelings of “gay beings born to flutter but a day”—to break such a pair of young, flimsy butterflies upon the wheel, affords me neither amusement nor delight; but the every-day occurrence of English travellers committing our well-earned national character for justice and liberality to the base, slave-driving hand of a courier, is a practice which, as well as the bad taste of acting the part of a London dandy on the great theatre of Europe, ought to be checked.

As we proceeded up the Rhine, there issued from one of the old romantic castles we were passing a party of young English lads, whose appearance (as soon as they came on board) did ample justice to their country; and, comparing them while they walked the deck, with the rest of their fellow-prisoners, I could not help more than once fancying that I saw a determination in their step, a latent character in their attitudes, and a vigour in their young frames, which being interpreted, said—

Besides these young collegians, an English gentleman came on board, who appeared quite delighted to join their party. He was a stout man, of about fifty, tall, well-dressed, evidently wealthy, and as ruddy as our mild wholesome air could make him. Not only had he a high colour, but there was a network of red veins in his cheeks, which seemed as if not even death could drive it away: his face shone from excessive cleanliness, and though his nose certainly was not long, there was a sort of round bull-dog honesty in his face, which it was quite delightful to gaze upon. I overheard this good man inform his countrymen, who had surrounded him in a group, that he had never before been out of England—and that, to tell the truth, he never wished to quit it again! “It’s surely beautiful scenery!” observed one of his auditors, pointing to the outline of a ruin which, with the rock upon which it stood, seemed flying away behind us. “Yes, yes!” replied the florid traveller. “But, sir! it’s the dirtiness of the people I complain of. Their cookery is dirty—they are dirty in their persons—dirty in their habits—that shocking trick of smoking (pointing to a fat German who was enjoying this pleasure close by his side, and who I rather suspect perfectly understood English) is dirty—depend upon it, they are what we should call, sir, a very dirty race!” “Do you speak the language?” said one of the young listeners with a smile which was very awkwardly repressed. “Oh, no!” replied the well-fed gentleman, laughing good-naturedly: “I know nothing of their language. I pay for all I eat, and I find, by paying, I can get anything I want. “Mangez! changez!” is quite foreign language enough, sir, for me;” and having to the first word suited his action, by pointing with his fore-finger to his mouth, and to explain the second, having rubbed his thumb against the self-same finger, as if it were counting out money, he joined the roar of laughter which his two French words had caused, and then very good-naturedly paced the deck by himself.

The jagged spires of Coblentz now came in sight, and every Englishman walked to the head of the vessel to see them, while several of the inhabitants of the city, with less curiosity, occupied themselves in leisurely getting together their luggage. For a moment, as we glided by the Moselle, on our right, we looked up the course of that lovely river, which here delivers up its waters to the Rhine; in a few minutes the bell on board rang, and continued to ring, until we found ourselves firmly moored to the pier of Coblentz. Most of the passengers went into the town. I, however, crossing the bridge of boats, took up my quarters at the Cheval Blanc, a large hotel, standing immediately beneath that towering rock so magnificently crowned by the celebrated fortress of Ehrenbreitstein.