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Chi può venire per mare non è lontano.

Paolo Sarpi, 1608.[23]

Hentzner, in his preface, acknowledges that the troubles of a traveller are great and finds only two arguments to countervail them: that man is born unto trouble, and that Abraham had orders to travel direct from God. Abraham, however, did not have to cross the Channel. Otherwise, perhaps, the prospect of sacrificing himself as well as his only son Isaac, would have brought to light a flaw in his obedience. There was, it is true, the chance of crossing from Dover to Calais in four hours, but the experiences of Princess Cecilia, already related, were no less likely. In 1610 two Ambassadors waited at Calais fourteen days before they could make a start, and making a start by no means implied arriving—at least, not at Dover; one gentleman, after a most unhappy night, found himself at Nieuport next morning and had to wait three days before another try could be made. Yet another, who had already sailed from Boulogne after having waited six hours for the tide, accomplished two leagues, been becalmed for nine or ten hours, returned to Boulogne by rowing-boat, and posted to Calais, found no wind to take him across there and had to charter another rowing-boat at sunset on Friday, reaching Dover on Monday between four and five A. M. It was naturally a rare occurrence to go the whole distance by small boat, because of the risk. Lord Herbert of Cherbury was the most noteworthy exception; after he had made three attempts from Brill and covered distances which varied from just outside the harbour to half-way, arriving at Brill again, however, each time, he went by land to Calais, where the sea was so dangerous that no one would venture, no one except one old fisherman, whose boat, he himself owned, was one of the worst in the harbour, but, on the other hand, he did not mind whether he lived or died.

But finishing the crossing by rowing-boat was a very ordinary experience because of the state of the harbours. Calais was the better of the two, yet it sometimes happened that passengers had to be carried ashore one hundred yards or more because not even boats could approach. In 1576 an ambassador to France complains that Dover harbour is in such utter ruin that he will cross elsewhere in future; in 1580 Sir Walter Ralegh procured reform, which was perpetually in need of renewal. In time a stone pier was built, small, and dry at low water, as indeed the whole harbour was; the entrance was narrow and kept from being choked up only by means of a gate which let out the water with a rush at low tide. The ancient, quicker route to Wissant, more or less the route which "Channel-swimmers" make for now, had begun to be abandoned when the English obtained a port of their own on the opposite coast, and had been completely dropped by this time. Boulogne had no cross-channel passenger traffic worth mentioning. Dieppe, on the contrary, was as much used as Calais, the corresponding harbour being, not Newhaven, but Rye, which was also the objective on the rarer occasions when the starting-place was Havre. So unusual was the Havre-Southampton passage that among the suspicious circumstances alleged against a Genoese who landed in 1599, one was his choice of this way across.[24]

Going by the North Sea the usual havens were Gravesend, and Flushing or Brill, in spite of Brill's shallow harbour-bar, passed on one occasion with only two feet of water under the keel when "Mr. Thatcher, a merchant of London, who had goods therein, was so apprehensive that he changed colours and said he was undone, 'Oh Lord,' and such-like passionate expressions." Harwich was reputed so dangerous a harbour that when Charles I's mother-in-law came to visit her daughter in 1638 and put in there, she found no one to receive her; it not being thought within possibility to expect her to land there. The fact that she did was probably due to her having been seven days at sea in a storm; not that the courtier-chronicler of her voyage allows she was any the worse for it, although he owns of her ladies that "they touched the hearts of the beholders more with pity than with love." A forty-eight-hour passage was nothing to grumble at: Arthur Wilson, the historian of James I's reign, left Brill in an old twenty-five-ton mussel-boat, at the bottom of which he lay, sea-sick and expecting drowning, for three days and three nights until he came ashore at—the Hague.

Among many other experiences of the kind, that[25] of John Chamberlain, the letter-writer, may be chosen. Setting out from Rotterdam, after twenty-four hours' sailing, he had been within sight of Ostend and was back again at Rotterdam. There he stayed a fortnight, putting to sea at intervals and coming back. Then the wind came fair for Calais, but veered round rather too soon and the first haven they could reach was that of Yarmouth, after two days' running before the storm. It was low tide; they went aground while entering, and for some time it looked like being lost with all hands, but getting off again, the waves took the ship against the piles at the head of the breakwater. Some thought it worth while trying to jump ashore, three of whom the others saw drowned and one crushed to death against the piles. But in the end the rest landed safely in boats, and buried the dead; and Chamberlain himself, after a winter evening spent wandering about Newmarket heath in the rain and wind through the guide losing his way, arrived in town at 11 P. M. on the twentieth day after first leaving Rotterdam.

On this route the ownership of the vessel might be guessed by the amount of swearing that went on. Dutch ships had no prayers said, rarely carried a chaplain even on the longest voyages, but swearers were fined, even if it was no more than naming the devil. Psalm-singing would go on on any vessel manned by Protestants on account of the popularity of the music written for the Reformers, but if a vessel had a garland of flowers hanging from its mainmast that again would show it a Dutchman; it meant that the captain was engaged to be married.

A CHANNEL PASSAGE-BOAT

The passage-boats were about sixty feet long, which then meant a tonnage of about the same figure, and had a single deck, beneath which the passengers might find shelter if the merchandise left them room. The complement of passengers may be taken as seventy. The highest total of passengers I have found mentioned for one ship is two thousand, of whom Della Valle was one, but that was when he sailed from Constantinople to Cairo, the vessels employed on official business between those two places exclusively being the largest in the world at that date. Apart from these, the maximum tonnage was about twelve hundred, and a 500-ton ship was reckoned a large one; an average Venetian merchantman measured about 90 feet × 20 × 16, a tonnage, that is, of about 166, according to English sixteenth-century reckoning.[26] The French traveller Villamont says the ship in which he left Venice in 1589 and which he was told cost fifty thousand crowns (say eighty-five thousand pounds of our money) to build and equip, had for its greatest length 188 feet and greatest breadth 59 feet.

As for accommodation in the larger boats, neither Dallam nor Moryson changed their clothes or slept in a bed while at sea, and there is no reason to suppose that any one else did who travelled under ordinary conditions. Cabins were to be had in the high-built sterns; even in Villamont's moderate-sized ship there were eight decks astern, the fourth from the keel, the captain's dining-room, accommodating thirty-nine persons at meal-times, all of whom, it is clear enough, slept in cabins above or below. Moryson, however, refused a cabin, preferring to sleep in a place where there was cover overhead but none at the sides.

The chief exception to ordinary conditions was the pilgrim-ship for Jerusalem in the days, which ceased during this period, when special galleys ran from Venice to Jaffa and back, in the summer. Here alone could the passenger have the upper hand, since these galleys alone were passenger-boats primarily. The captain would be willing, if asked, to bind himself in writing before the authorities at Venice, to take the pilgrim to Jaffa, wait there and bring him back, call at certain places to take in fresh water, meat, and bread, carry live hens, a barber-surgeon, and a physician, avoid unhealthy ports such as Famagosta, stay nowhere longer than three days without the consent of the pilgrim, receive no merchandise which might inconvenience or delay him, provide two hot meals a day and good wine, and guarantee the safety of any belongings he might leave in the galley during his absence at Jerusalem. No agreements, however, seem to have insured the pilgrim against starvation diet, and therefore it was prudent to store a chest with victuals, especially delicacies, and lay in wine; for, Venice once left behind, wine might be dearer or even unobtainable. Taking victuals implied buying a frying-pan, dishes, big and little, of earthenware or wood, a stew-pot, and a twig-basket to carry when he landed and went shopping. Likewise a lantern and candles and bedding, which might be purchased near St. Mark's; a feather-bed, mattress, two pillows, two pairs of sheets, a small quilt, for three ducats; and all of these will be bought back at the end of the voyage at half price. Medicines he must on no account forget. Care had to be taken, too, in choosing a position, not below deck, which is "smouldering hot and stinking," but above, where both shelter, light, and air were to be had; this, of course, for the benefit of such as were unable to secure a place in the stern-cabins.

If the passenger did not find himself in a position to get these counsels of perfection carried out, this is what he would experience: "In the galley all sorts of discomfort are met with: to each of us was allotted a space three spans broad, and so we lay one upon another, suffering greatly from the heat in summer and much troubled by vermin. Huge rats came running over our faces at nights, and a sharp eye had to be kept on the torches, for some people go about carelessly and there's no putting them out in case of fire, being, as they are, all pitch. And when it is time to go to sleep and one has great desire thereto, others near him talk or sing or yell and generally please themselves, so that one's rest is broken. Those near us who fell ill mostly died. God have mercy on them! In day-time too when we were all in our places busy eating and the galley bore down on the side to which the sail shifted, all the sailors called out 'pando,' that is, 'to the other side,' and over we must go; and if the sea was rough and the galley lurched, our heads turned all giddy and some toppled over and the rest on top of them, falling about like so many drunken yokels. The meals the captain gave us were not exactly inviting; the meat had been hanging in the sun, the bread hard as a stone with many weevils in it, the water at times stank, the wine warm, or hot enough for the steam to rise, with a beastly taste to it; and at times, too, we had to do our eating under a blazing sun. … [27] Bugs, etc., crept about over everything."[28] Another, after many similar complaints, of cold food and warm drink, and of sailors who walked about on top of him when he wanted to sleep, and so on, adds a fresh one, quite unmentionable, and then goes on that he passes over the more disgusting features so as not to discourage intending pilgrims.

The disappearance of the pilgrim galley was more gain than loss, but it had the advantage of more variety in the company and the voyage, and probably, of a bigger ship; Moryson's ship was 900-tons and Della Valle's Gran Delfino was a great war galleon, with forty-five cannon and five hundred passengers—too many, it proved; in the end twenty or thirty fell ill every day and some died. And the mixture that there was! Men and women, soldiers, traders, Greeks, Armenians, Turks, Persians, Jews, Italians from almost every state, French, Spanish, Portuguese, English, Germans, Flemings. In Moryson's boat there were Indian sun-worshippers as well. In another, Moors and Muscovites. Every day in the Gran Delfino a bell was rung for prayer, when each man prayed in his own way; prayer over, the sailors, all Greeks, turned bareheaded to the East and cried three times, "Buon' Viaggio!!!" and the captain preached a non-sectarian sermon. With the Gran Delfino, moreover, the start was an impressive function; the vessel, belonging as it did to the State, being towed beyond the lagoons by thirty-three eight-oared boats, directed by a venerable signor deputed by the authorities. Once outside, however, and left to itself, it was less impressive, at the mercy of a wind so uncertain that it crossed the Adriatic from shore to shore twenty-five times.

In reckoning the length of voyages it would not be sufficient to multiply the delay by bad weather that took place in the Channel crossings by the extra mileage of a given distance; there was the additional delay due to the difficulty of obtaining a ship at all, even in the best of weathers, a difficulty proportionate to the length of the voyage. The first-mentioned difficulty must not be minimised; it was reasonable caricature for Sir John Harington, Queen Elizabeth's godson, to represent his Rabelaisian hero as returning from "Japana near China" in a "24-hours sail with some two or three odd years beside." And by way of illustration it may be added that one and the same voyage—from Messina to Smyrna—took one man thirteen weeks and another thirty-five days; and that whereas the usual length of the pilgrim voyage from Jaffa to Venice was under five weeks, one band of pilgrims whose return journey was delayed till the winter storms caught them, were continuously at sea, or continuously trying to be at sea, from September 19th till January 25th. Yet another cause of delay, in the Mediterranean, at least, was the Italian custom of paying the sailors by the day; English ships, payment on which was at so much a voyage, were by far the quicker.

To return to difficulty number two, that of obtaining any ship, instances of it are continually occurring. Consider the complaint that one Greenhalgh writes to his friend[29]—how he wished to go by sea to Naples or elsewhere in Italy, went to the Exchange at London almost daily for a month to read the ships' bills hanging there; could find none to take him; took passage at Blackwall on one that was bound for Dunkirk, but which the wind carried along the coast of Norfolk; reached Dunkirk in four days and four nights; no ship to be found there Italy-bound; nor at Gravelines; nor at Calais; so came back: seven weeks wasted.

But it may reasonably be asked, why didn't he go by land? Well, that is a question without an answer; but for any journey where the mileage by sea was near the mileage by land, men of experience of these days reckoned it safer and quicker and consequently cheaper to go by sea. Once when Sir Henry Wotton, who exhaled sixteenth-century wisdom whenever he spoke, was at his favourite occupation of holding forth to the Venetian Signory on things in general, we find him taking it for granted that Poland and Hungary were far from Venice as compared with England and Holland; an exaggeration, no doubt; but an exaggeration that stood no chance of being believed would not have served his purpose. And it would be just plain fact to say, with regard to Danzig and Paris, and every other similar journey, the sea for choice; even from Genoa to Rome, amid all the danger of captivity for life by Barbary pirates, there was a daily service of boats in 1588 according to Villamont; it was the more usual route. Howell, indeed, leaving Paris for Spain, went to St. Malo to find a ship, but the ordinary route was to go down the Loire to Nantes, and by sea thence.

In the same way, from Rome to Barcelona was usually made a sea-trip, although the sailors coasted instead of going direct. All voyages in fact were coasting voyages whenever possible; no landsman was more scared of the open sea than the average sailor during this period, the greatest for the exploration of oceans that the world has ever seen, except, perhaps, that unknown age when the islands of the Pacific were colonised. The fear was based on an accurate knowledge of their own incapacity, revealed to us by one or two travellers who were interested in the science of navigation. A certain Frenchman embarked at Vannes for Portugal; no bearings were taken, and the pilot had no chart; trusted to his eye for his knowledge; which resulted in his coasting along Galicia under the impression it was Asturias. So with the master of the Venetian ship that Lithgow sailed in; he had no compass, cast anchor at night and guessed his whereabouts in daytime by the hills he recognised; on his way back from Alexandria a storm drove them out of their course and he describes, in his doggrel verse, the sailors spending hours identifying headlands, only to find themselves mistaken. Indeed, there was no satisfactory method of ascertaining longitude at sea; although European rulers were offering rewards to the inventor of a method, no one was successful in trying to solve the problem, not even Galileo.[30] So habitual a practice was coasting that if a ship was intent on avoiding a pirate the surest plan was to keep to the open sea.

SHIP FOR A LONG-DISTANCE VOYAGE

But for the most part they seem to have trusted to luck with regard to piracy, knowing pirates to be as likely to be met with as storms. The two chief centres were Dunkirk and Algiers, and as the Dunkirkers and Algerines met in the Atlantic, the Baltic was the only European sea free from them, during the latter half of this period at least. In the earlier, war was so continual as to provide employment, or pretext, for the bulk of the scoundrels and unfortunates of the continent whom the comparative peace that succeeded turned loose on commerce, and consequently on tourists.

It was bad enough in the Channel before this. In 1573 the Earl of Worcester crossed with a gold salver as a christening present for Charles IX's daughter; the ship was attacked by pirates; eleven of his suite were killed or wounded and property worth five hundred pounds stolen. In 1584, Mr. Oppenheim states, the French ambassador complained that in the two preceding years English pirates had plundered Frenchmen of merchandise to the value of two hundred thousand crowns: the answer was that the English had lost more than that through French pirates. So in 1600 we find the Mayor of Exeter writing up about the Dunkirkers, "scarce one bark in five escapeth these cormorants."[31] Repression that was exercised by the governments on both sides of the Channel had the effect of making the Mediterranean worse than it had been, for the pirates, especially English, not only followed their occupation there themselves but taught the Turks and Algerines far more about navigation than the latter would have discovered by themselves. Which, by the way, had a further result adverse to English tourists, for the Italian states that had previously been favourably inclined to England, Venice and Tuscany, both of European importance, grew unfriendly; Tuscany becoming definitely hostile.

But the state of the Mediterranean for men of all nationalities was such that it would probably be difficult to find a detailed account of a voyage during the first half of the seventeenth century which does not mention meeting an enemy. What might happen then is best illustrated in the experience of a Russian monk of rather earlier date: "half-way, a ship full of pirates attacked us. When their cannon had shattered our boat, they leapt on board like savage beasts and cut the ship's master to pieces and threw him into the sea, and took all they found. As for me, they gave me a blow in the stomach with the butt-end of a lance, saying 'Monk, give us a ducat or a gold piece.' I swore by the living God, by God Almighty, that I had none such. They bereft me of my all, leaving me nought but my frock and took to running all about the ship like wild beasts waving glittering lances, swords and axes. … "

Storms also were accompanied by incidents out of a present-day tourist's experience, to a greater extent than would readily be imagined; and this especially in the Mediterranean, where a large proportion of the sailors were Greeks with vivid superstitions, and courage but one day a year, that of St. Catherine, the patroness of sailors, when nobody ever got drowned. Other days it required very little danger to make them abandon themselves to despair and to all the signs of it which were most likely to distract and demoralise the more level-headed; one by one their relics would go overboard in attempted propitiation, and the tourist was in danger of following in person if he was suspected of being no good Christian and therefore the probable cause of the storm. Such is the recorded experience of more than one; and a priest who had been in the habit of reading a Bible was threatened with ejection as a sorcerer, and his books with him; fortunately the storm abated when the sailors had reached that point.

It may safely be said that control of the weather by sorcerers was altogether disbelieved in by very few persons then, but if the belief was held more strongly along one coast-line than another, it was round the Baltic rather than elsewhere. As late as 1670[32] a traveller tells us how being becalmed off Finland, the captain sent ashore to buy a wind from a wizard; the fee was ten kroner (say thirty-six shillings) and a pound of tobacco. The wizard tied a woollen rag to the mast, with three knots in it. Untying the first knot produces just the wind they want; S. W.; that slackening, untying knot number two revives it for a time; but knot number three brings up a fearful northeaster which nearly sank them. "Qui nescit orare, discat navigare" was a much-quoted phrase; truly enough of one traveller, it would appear, seeing he is reported to have prayed during a storm; "O Lord, I am no common beggar; I do not trouble thee every day; for I never prayed to thee before; and if it please thee to deliver me this once, I will never pray to thee again as long as I live."

Shipwreck had an additional danger when it happened to a galley rowed by forced labour. Cardinal De Retz gives a vivid picture of what happened when the one he was in ran aground. The whole bank of galley-slaves rose; in fear, or to escape by swimming, or to master the vessel amidst the confusion. The commander and other officers took double-edged swords and struck down all whom they found standing. Even a mere landing was not without risk, for the custom in force almost universally of asking every new-comer officially his business, home, destination, was still more the rule at the coast; this same cardinal, when a fugitive landing in shabby clothes at St. Sebastian, was told by the soldiers he would probably be hanged in the morning, inasmuch as the ship's captain had mislaid his "charte-partie," in the absence of which every one in the ship could legally be hanged without trial.

And if they had their special sea-troubles of pirates and Greek sailors and small boats in high seas, how much more certain was sea-sickness and the length of its enduring. Lauder remembered leaving Dover at 2 A. M.—"What a distressed broker I was upon the sea needs not here be told since it's not to be feared that I'll forget it, yet I cannot but tell how Mr. John Kincead and I had a bucket betwixt us and strove who should have the bucket first, both equally ready; and how at every vomit and gasp he gave he cried 'God's mercy' as if he had been about to expire immediately." For preventives nobody has anything to suggest except, appropriately enough, one Father Noah, a Franciscan, who prescribes pomegranates and mint; and Rabelais, who says that Pantagruel and company departed with full stomachs and for that reason were not sea-sick; a better precaution, he goes on, than drinking water some days beforehand, salt or fresh, with wine or meat, or than taking pulp of quinces, or lemon-peel, or pomegranate juice; or fasting previously, or covering their stomachs with paper.

Yet Panurge, who was always full or filling, became sea-sick when the storm came. As a picture of sea-sickness, Rabelais' account of Panurge sea-sick is probably unsurpassed. "He remained all of a heap on Deck, utterly cast down and metagrobolised. 'What ho, Steward, my Friend, my Father, my Uncle; … O, three and four times happy are those who plant Cabbages … they have always one Foot on Land and the other is not far from it. … This Wave will sweep us away, blessed Saviour. O my Friend, a little Vinegar; I sweat again with sheer Agony. … I am drowning, I am drowning, I am dying. Good people, I drown. … Ah, my Father, my Uncle, my All, the water has got into my Shoes, by my Shirt-collar. Bous, bous, bous; paisch; hu, hu, hu, ha, ha, ha, I drown … eighteen hundred thousand Crowns a year to the man who will put me ashore. … Holos, good People, I drown, I die. Consummatum est; it is all over with me. … My good man, couldn't you throw me ashore?'"[33]

Sea-sickness was probably more common then than now because the discomforts were so much farther from being minimised. Moryson recommends passengers to take rose leaves, lemons or oranges, or the roots or the leaves of angelica, cloves, or rosemary, to counteract the evil smells of the boat; he might have added, of the company too, more particularly with reference to river traffic, because there the company was specially liable to be mixed by reason of the cheapness of that way of travelling as compared with horseback; and because the contact with each other was close.

It is not without signification that practically all district-maps of this date mark the courses of rivers, but not of roads. Probably few records could be found of any touring of this period worth calling a tour which was not partly conducted by river. One advantage of river travel was that that way was more regularly practicable than the roads, which bad weather soon rendered barely passable. Moreover, it was the pleasantest mode of journeying, especially if the boat was towed; for travelling in a sixteenth-century waggon produced something like sea-sickness in those unaccustomed to it. On the other hand, to get the benefit of the cheapness of river travelling, as compared with riding, one had to wait, at times, for fellow-travellers to fill the boat; also, the choice of route was, of course, more limited; and on the swifter rivers it was not usual, or worth while, to attempt an up-stream journey.

On the Loire, for instance, at Roanne, where it began to be navigable, boats were all built for sale, not for hire, as they were not expected to come back; and the same practice was in use elsewhere. But this must be taken as a rule with many exceptions. On the lower Loire towing was in regular use and Lady Fanshawe, who tried it, right from Nantes to Orleans, says, "of all my travels none were, for travel sake, as I may call it, so pleasant as this." They went on shore to sleep, but kept to the boat all daytime, for it possessed a "hearth," a charcoal fire on which they did the cooking. Where towing was most frequently used was probably Russia, all by hand; sometimes as many as three hundred men were being employed at once by Charles II's ambassador for the six barges and one boat between Archangel and Vologda.

When rowing was to be done, the tourist found himself expected, practically compelled, to take his share on the Elbe and the Rhine, and often on other rivers too. The diarist Evelyn reckoned that he rowed twenty leagues of the distance between Roanne and Orleans, and no doubt Edmund Waller, the poet, did the same, as he was one of the party. If any exemptions were made, it was the boatman who exempted himself.

Another poet, or, at least, verse-writer, was deserted altogether by his boatman. This was John Taylor, on his way back from Prague. He had taken to the river at Leitmeritz, with his two companions and some one else's widow and her four small children, they having jointly bought a boat forty-eight feet by three. It was at the Saxony boundary that the man ran away, whence there were six hundred miles to cover, past one thousand "shelves and sands," eight hundred islands, and numberless tree-stumps and rocks, two hundred and forty of the islands having a mill on one side, but which side was not visible beforehand. His figures, however, need not be taken too literally as he went "gathering," to use his own words, "like a busy bee, all these honied observations; some by sight, some by hearing, some by both, some by neither, and some by bare supposition."

Equally exciting was Busbecq's passage down the Danube in a boat roped to a 24-oar pinnace. He was behind time, so they rowed night and day, pulling hard against a violent wind. The bed of the river was uncared for, and collisions with tree-stumps were frequent; once it was with the bank, so hard that a few planks came away. But the ambassador got no further answer to his remonstrances than "God will help" from the Turkish rowers. The Danube was mainly a Turkish river then.

On the lakes there were, of course, storms to contend with, two of which nearly drowned two of the most gifted men of the century, De Thou the historian, and the artist Cellini. It is fairly clear, too, that their almost identical experiences took place on the same lake; that of Wallenstadt, although neither of them gives the name. The boat De Thou crossed in was made of fir-trunks, neither sound, nor tarred, nor nailed; a German was in it, too, with his horse, which fell about; the helmsman left his post, called out to all to save themselves if they could; nothing was to be seen but rain and lake and perpendicular rock, until a cave was sighted towards which all joined in an effort to row. A way up the rock was found, at the top, an inn, just where Cellini had found one nearly half a century earlier.

On the rivers themselves there were two further disadvantages to meet; delay through running aground and danger in shooting the bridges. The latter was very great: the bridge which gave its name to Pont-St.-Esprit on the Rhone was as notorious a place for shipwrecks as any headland, and no doubt it happened then, as it used to happen later, at Beaugency, on the Loire, that all card-playing and talking ceased from the moment the boatmen began to prepare for the passage underneath till the passage was safely over. As for running aground, it did not happen so often as might have been expected, to judge by what is left unsaid by the travellers: one must not strike any average from Peter Mundy's feat of doing it forty times in two days.

LOCK BETWEEN BOLOGNA AND FERRARA

Both these drawbacks were present, nevertheless, to a serious extent, and for the same reason; the total absence of regulation of the flow of water. Locks, or "sluices" as they were termed then, were being introduced exceedingly slowly; how slowly is evident from a Frenchman explaining[34] the working in detail in his journal (without the use of any specialised terms) of one on the Reno, between Bologna and Ferrara. Considering that he must have had much experience of France and had by that time traversed all the waterways generally used for passenger traffic in Italy, it may be concluded that locks were at least very rare in both countries. Some such deduction may also be made for England and France from an Englishman doing the same when at Montargis on the Loire, nearly seventy years later.[35] Even in Holland, the nursery of the lock-system, its development was slow. In 1605 a Venetian ambassador mentions that the lock-gates between Brussels and Antwerp were only opened once a week, when the weekly trade-barge went along; at other times every one had to change boats at every lock; just as was done on the series of canals formed out of the marshes between the Reno and the Po, according to the Frenchman just quoted. In the middle of the seventeenth century, the same arrangement was in force between Antwerp and Brussels, so Evelyn says, whereas, he implies that between Bologna and Ferrara a lock system was fully in use.

In canals, the great achievement of the period was the cutting of one for nine miles between Amsterdam and Haarlem in six months at a cost of £20,000, finished not long before Sir W. Brereton passed through it in 1634; the previous route had been by a canal in the direction of Haarlem Meer, the boat having to be lugged by hand past the dam which separated the canal from the Meer. Here, in Holland, too, was by far the best passenger service in Europe; in many cases boats were towed, or sailed, between town and town every hour with fares fixed by the local authorities, and the only complaint that is to be heard concerns the drunkenness of the boatmen, who frequently landed the passengers in the water. But there is an isolated complaint, by an Italian chaplain, which shows what the others accepted as no more than reasonable. Nearing Amsterdam, he and his passed the night in the open barge, unable to sit up, much less stand, because of the lowness of the bridges, but forced to lie, in pouring rain, on foul straw, as if they were "gentlemen from Reggio," a phrase that is still used in Venice as a synonym for pigs.

Practicability, comfort, cheapness, and speed—for all these qualities the water could more than hold its own against the land under even conditions; and a traveller from Italy to Munich finishes his journey by raft down the Iser and reckons himself a gainer in time by using that means in preference to horseback.

It is in France, however, that the importance of waterways reaches its maximum. Almost every tourist's way from Paris, except that by Picardy, lay along a line which a river traversed; the windings of the Seine did not prevent it being quite as convenient as the road; while the Loire and the Rhone were far more so; and for approaching Paris, the Garonne was very frequently part of one route, even up to its mouth; the upper Loire of another. An even clearer idea of the importance and amount of usage of riverways in France is gained by considering how Lyons has maintained a high and steady degree of prosperity before, during, and since the rise and fall of Venice and of Amsterdam, and how at this period the only neglected parts of France were those which lay between the chief rivers, which have, in fact, so far dictated the course to be followed by the main road routes that the neglected parts of France are the same now as then. To Lyons the Rhone gave access to Italy, Spain, and Africa; twelve leagues away the Loire becomes navigable, and from Gien on the Loire was one day's journey to a tributary of the Seine, the Loing: which three rivers put Lyons in touch with North Spain, most of France and all northern Europe. Neither was Lyons very far from the Rhine and the Danube.

In Spain alone were the rivers unused by the traveller. In southern Italy they were less used than in Roman times, when passenger traffic was customary on the Tiber and smaller rivers,[36] which certainly was not the case three hundred years ago; the disuse of the lower reaches of the Tiber is accounted for by the fear of the Turks, to prevent an attack on Rome by whom the mouth of the river was closed. In North Italy on the other hand, the Adige, Brenta, and Po are frequently mentioned; the Po, indeed, from Turin must have been as constantly in use as any river in Europe in proportion to its length. From Mantua to Ferrara in 1574[37] a boat sailed every night as a matter of course; between Mantua and Venice communication by water was regular in 1591, and even from Milan to Venice it was quite an ordinary thing to travel by the Po, finishing the journey along the Adige to Chioggia by means of a canal which linked up the two rivers. As for the Brenta, it had its own proverb, that the passenger boat (between Padua and Venice) would sink when it contained neither monk, student, nor courtesan, which is as much as to say that the tourist would always find company, as well as a boat, ready.

It is in connection with the waterways of North Italy that one of the debated questions of Shakespeare's life has arisen: as to how much, or how little, he knew of Italy first hand. But hitherto the commentators have been contented with so little evidence that his references to them have been misinterpreted and the accuracy of the impression that they give, and would give still more distinctly had his editors done him justice, has been denied. A recent writer[38] has set out the facts and some evidence so clearly that there is no need to add to the latter further than has already been done by the few instances just mentioned: a few out of an almost indefinite number which are to be found in the writings of these tourists contemporary with Shakespeare, who are surely the most satisfactory witnesses in a case like this, wholly concerned with what he, if a tourist, would have seen. What they show is that in practically every North Italian town passenger traffic by water formed part of the daily life, and that is the impression clearly shared by Shakespeare. When he represents the passenger traffic in an Italian river being dependent on the tide, it must be remembered that he lived near old London Bridge, where the tidal rush was tremendous; and that for his purpose in writing accuracy did not matter in the very least. Neither is any mistake of his over routes to be compared with one of the careful Villamont, who asserts that he reached Este from Padua by the Brenta and that the Brenta is navigable no farther than Este. Now Este is southwest of Padua and the Brenta reaches the latter from northwest and never gets within seventeen miles of Este; but what is more particularly to be noted is that Villamont's "Voyages" was the book of European travel most frequently reprinted in Shakespeare's lifetime and that the error was never corrected. At the same time, it is, perhaps, worth while laying stress on the fact that no deduction can be made from all this as to whether Shakespeare ever left England or the reverse, because his capacity for using second-hand knowledge was so unique that it may be said of him as can be said of probably no other writer, that it is impossible to make a reasonable guess as to when his knowledge is first-hand and when it is not.

Another subject which needs to be treated here, although at first sight it also seems out of place, is that of the characteristics of the islands of Europe as seen by foreigners; for among the advantages of choosing the sea must be reckoned acquaintance with those places which one would never get a glimpse of without a voyage; that is, those which ships touched at but which did not form parts of the tourist's objective. Far and away the chief of these were the islands of the Levant. The opinion that the tourists have of them is probably rose-coloured by the fact that these broke the monotony of a longer voyage than they had need of otherwise; but the fact remains that all agree in depicting them as the spots where human life was at its pleasantest. Of Chios, in particular, might be used the childlike phrase which the Italians used to express the height of happiness—it was like touching heaven with one's fingers. Nowhere was there greater freedom or greater pleasure. Such was Della Valle's opinion, who calls it "the pleasure-place of the Archipelago and the garden of Greece"; nothing but singing, dancing, and talking with the ladies of the isle, not only in daytime but up to four or five in the morning. Their costume was the only thing in Chios that could have been improved and this seems to refer to the style only, for Lithgow says that they were so sumptuously apparelled that workmen's wives went in satin and taffety, and cloth of gold, and silver, with jewelled rings and bracelets; and when he goes on to say that they were the most beautiful women he ever saw, it is worth remembering that he not only covered more ground in Europe, but visited a greater number of the islands of the Mediterranean than any of the others. Besides, there are so many to confirm it; and although three hundred years ago there was little of what we call appreciation of nature, or rather, of the modern custom of definitely expressing such appreciation, there was no lack of appreciation, and expression of appreciation, of nature when taking a human and feminine form. Singing, too, seems to have been part of living hereabouts: in Crete, for instance, the men, women, and children of a household would usually sing together for an hour after dinner. When there was a seamy side to their life it was associated with politics; in this same Crete Lithgow stayed for fifty-eight days and never saw a Greek leave his house unarmed: generally it was with a steel cap, a long sword, a bow, dagger, and target-shield. In Zante, too, labourers went to the fields armed; but then it must be taken into account that the men of Zante were peculiarly murderous; if a merchant refused to buy from them his life would be in danger: and also, it was under Venetian rule, a double evil; first, because it had no other object than that of benefitting Venetians, and secondly, it implied opposition to the Turks, which was worse, much worse, than the rule of the Turks. Chios was under Turkish rule; so was Coos, the next happiest place, very rarely visited, but well worth it, partly for what Della Valle calls the "Amorevolezza" of that generation, partly because there were still to be seen the houses of Hippocrates, Hercules, and Peleus, Achilles' father. At Corfu was the house of Judas; also his descendants, however much the latter denied their ancestry; and near Lesbos, the islet called Monte Sancto because it was thither that the Devil had borne Christ to show him all the kingdoms of the earth. Then there were all the natural curiosities which the tourist might see in the Levant and nowhere else; asbestos at Cyprus, likewise ladanum "generated by the dew," and at Lemnos the "terra sigillata" famed throughout Europe for its healing properties, an interesting example of an ancient superstition taken over by Christianity; for the priestess of Artemis who had the charge of the sacred earth in Pliny's time had been succeeded by the Christian priest whom the Turkish officials watched at work without interfering, in case there might be some rite which they did not know of and on the use of which the efficacy of the earth depended.

So also, with volcanoes; it was only he who went by sea who saw any other than Vesuvius; and in addition to their scientific, they had also a theological, attraction, being generally considered as mouths of hell, Stromboli, in particular, more continually active than the rest. Concerning Stromboli there is a curious tale which is worth borrowing from Sandys, how one Gresham, a London merchant, ascended the volcano one day, at noon, when the flames were wont to slacken, and heard a voice call out that the rich Antonio was coming. On returning to Palermo where there was a rich Antonio, well known, he learnt that the latter had died at the hour the voice had been heard, and the fact and hour were confirmed by the sailors who had accompanied Gresham, to Henry VIII, who questioned them. Gresham himself retired from business and gave away his property.

Another Levant incident, characteristic, mysterious, and one of Sandys' telling, moreover, is this. He was at Malta one day, alone on the seashore, and what he saw seemed like a part of a masque. A boat arrived; in it, two old women. Out they stepped with grotesque gestures, and spread a Turkey carpet, on that a table-cloth, and on that victuals of the best. Then came another boat which set "a Gallant ashore with his two Amorosaes, attired like nymphs, with Lutes in their hands." But the "gallant" turned out to be a French captain and the nymphs far from spiritual.

Or again; once, on the way to Constantinople, they were near land and he made a day's excursion. Returning at evening, he found the captain lying dripping wet, struggling, it seemed, with death. The crew were all quarrelling, some on board, some on shore. "Amongst the rest there was a blind man who had married a young wife that would not let him lie with her and thereupon had undertaken this journey to complain unto the Patriarch. He, hearing his brother cry out at the receipt of a blow, guided to the place by the noise and thinking with his staff to have struck the striker, laid it on with such force that, meeting with nothing but air, he fell into the sea, and was with difficulty preserved from drowning. The clamour increased; and anon the captain, starting up as if of a sudden restored to life, like a madman skips into the boat, and drawing a Turkish scimitar, beginneth to lay about him (thinking that his vessel had been surprised by pirates): whereupon they all leaped into the sea, and diving under the water ascended outside the reach of his fury. Leaping ashore, he pursues my Greek guide, whom fear made too nimble for him, mounting a steep cliff which at another time he could have hardly ascended. Then turning upon me (who was only armed with stones) as God would have it, he stumbled, and there lay like a stone for two hours, that which had made them so quarrelsome being now the peace-maker. For it being proclaimed death to bring wine into Constantinople and they loath to pour such good liquor into the sea, had made their bellies their overcharged vessels."

But it would be doing the Levant injustice to let the last word on it be an explained miracle, and therefore you may be informed on the testimony of John Newberie, citizen and merchant of London, who, "being desirous to see the world," has become enrolled in the band of Purchas, His Pilgrims, that there was a small isle near Melos, to wit, the Isola de' Diavoli, uninhabited but by devils; and if any vessels are moored thereto, as may be done, the water being deep by the shore, the ropes loose their hold unless the sailors make a cross with every two cables. And once upon a time, when a Florentine galley was moored there without a cross, a loud voice was heard warning the sailors to row away.

And lastly, this is what happened when a funeral had to take place at sea; an inventory of the deceased's goods was made, the ship's bell was rung twice, a fire-brand thrown into the sea, and the announcement made: "Gentlemen mariners, pray for the soul of poor—— whereby, through God's mercy, he may rest with the souls of the faithful." But it is pleasant to say that on the only occasion this form of burial is recorded the deceased was alive, if not kicking; he was at his post, the "look out," curled up asleep, as he had been for forty-eight hours previously, sleeping off the effects of Greek wine.

The amount of attention given to the other islands of the Mediterranean, Sicily, which may be considered part of Italy, excepted, might well be represented by saying nothing about them, but Cardinal de Retz's remark about Port Mahon, Minorca, is too characteristic of his age to be passed over; he praises it as the most beautiful haven of the Mediterranean, so beautiful that its scenery surpassed even that employed at Paris for the opera!