When going by coach, avoid women, especially old women; they always want the best places.
At sea, remove your spurs; sailors make a point of stealing them from those who are being sea-sick. Keep your distance from them in any case; they are covered with vermin.
In an inn-bedroom which contains big pictures, look behind the latter to see they do not conceal a secret door, or a window.
Women should not travel at all and married men not much.
CHAPTER III
ON THE WATER
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.