Scherr relates that in the late autumn of 1721 a citizen of Schwabisch-Gmünd travelled to Ellwangen, a distance of eight hours' posting.
Before starting, he had a mass performed in St John's Church 'for the safe conclusion of the coming journey.' He set off one Monday with his wife and a maid in a two-horse vehicle called a small tilt waggon (Planwägelchen), but in less than an hour the wheels stuck in mud, and the whole party had to get out and push the carriage, up to their knees in filth. In the middle of the village of Boebingen the driver inadvertently drove the front left wheel into a manure hole, the carriage was overturned, and the lady of the party had her nose and cheek badly grazed by the iron hoops.
From Moeggelingen to Aalen they were obliged to use three horses, and yet it took fully six hours, so that they were obliged to spend the night there. Next morning they set off early, and reached the village of Hofen by mid-day without accidents. Here for a time the travelling ceased, for a hundred paces beyond the village the carriage fell into a puddle, and they were all terribly soiled; the maid's right shoulder was dislocated, and the manservant's hand injured. The axle of one of the wheels was broken, and a horse completely lamed in the left forefoot. They had to put up a second time for the night, leave horses, carriage, man, and maid in Hofen, and hire a rack waggon, in which at last, pitifully shaken, they reached the gates of Ellwangen on Wednesday at vesper bells.
When Eva König, Lessing's fiancée, was on her way from Brunswick to Nuremberg in 1772, she wrote to him from Rattelsdorf (two miles north of Bamberg), on February 28th, as follows:
You will certainly never in your life have heard of a village called Rattelsdorf? We have been in it already twenty-four hours, and who knows if we shall not have to stay four times as long! It depends on the Maine, whether it falls or not; as it is now, one could not cross it, even if one dared to. I have never in my life met with so many hindrances, so many dangers and hardships, as on this journey. I can hardly think of any misfortunes which we have not already had.
She goes on to describe that in thirty-eight hours two axles and two poles had been broken, the horses had bolted with them, one horse had fallen and died, and so on; on March 2nd they were still prisoners in the wretched village.
In 1750 a day's journey was still reckoned at five miles, two hours to the mile; and when in July 1750 Klopstock travelled with Gleim from Halberstadt to Magdeburg in a light carriage drawn by four horses, at the rate of six miles in six hours, he thought this speed remarkable enough to merit comparison with the racing in the Olympian games. People of any pretensions shunned the discomforts of travelling on foot--the bad roads, the insecurity, the dirty inns, and the rough treatment in them; to walk abroad in good clothes and admire the scenery was an unknown thing. (G. Freytag.)
It was only after the widening of thoroughfares, the invention of steamboats (the first was on the Weser 1827) and railways (1835), that travelling became commoner and more popular, and feeling for Nature was thereby increased.
After the Swiss Alps had been discovered for them, people began to feel interest in their native mountains; Zimmermann led the way with his observations on a journey in the Harz 1775, and Gatterer in 1785 published A Guide to Travelling in the Harz in five volumes.
In 1806 appeared Nicolas's Guide to Switzerland, in 1777 J.T. Volkmar's Journey to the Riesengebirge, and before long each little country and province, be it Weimar, Mecklenburg, or the Mark, had discovered a Switzerland within its own boundaries, with mountains as much like the Swiss Alps as a charming little girl is like a giant.