As for stone bridges, Spain seems to have been the best off before 1600, but subsequently the improvement in bridges became very marked, especially in France. When Zinzerling knew Paris (1612-16), of its five bridges, only two were of stone, whereas of the six that Evelyn saw in 1643, but one was of wood. The only stone bridges in the empire that are mentioned are those of Schaffhausen, of Ratisbon, and, over the Moselle, of Coblentz; while two of the finest west of the Rhine, those of Avignon and Rouen, were impassable owing to gaps which no authority saw its way to repair. But the test of a first-rate bridge in 1600 was not how much traffic, but how many houses, it carried. Judged by this standard, it was agreed that London Bridge was the finest, with that of Nôtre Dame at Paris second, considering the latter's houses numbered sixty-eight. Still, it was with the number of bridges that the tourist was mainly concerned, in which matter he would find the Loire the only river across which passage was fairly easy; the Rhine had no bridge below Strassburg; the Seine had to be crossed five times by boat in the first four leagues of road northwards from Paris; and below Turin there existed no bridge over the Po except a wooden one at Ferrara.
Means of conveyance consisted of riding, subdivided into post-horses and other beasts; by cart, either the long, heavy waggon employed by carriers, or those with two big wheels and no more, which occasioned the traveller fewest shocks; and lastly, by litter. Coaches, in the sense of vehicles which are supposed to be comfortable, can hardly be said to have existed except among private owners, and even these preferred the litter, especially in winter. The acme of luxury when on the road may be represented by Marguerite de Valois' litter used on her journey to the Netherlands. The lining was of Spanish velvet, the hangings of silk, the sides glazed with one hundred and forty panes of glass, each of which bore a different design.
As for carts, though everywhere one comes across occasional instances of their use by tourists, this was far more customary in Germany than elsewhere; even a knight-errant going to seek his fortune, Sir Anthony Sherley, mentions covering distances in them there without apology. The German "rollwagen" carried six or eight passengers; those of the Low Countries as many as ten, sitting on boards laid across the cart so close behind one another that they resembled geese going to the pond. The chief centre for carrier-arrangements was Augsburg; thence to Venice and back a waggon went each week; between Augsburg and Nuremberg daily. In France conveyances started running more freely as the civil wars slackened, as, e. g. between Troyes and Paris in 1598; a reversion to what had been in force earlier. But in 1584 between Amiens and Paris, and in 1586 between Rouen and Paris, was running what was called the "coche royale," which took passengers.[106] By Zinzerling's time communications of this kind existed between Paris and Orleans, and Paris and Rouen, daily; between Rouen and Dieppe thrice weekly; and between Rouen and Antwerp.
The disadvantages of waggons were more obvious in the Low Countries than elsewhere, since there they never entered towns, depositing the passenger, heavy luggage and all, outside the gate; often, too, a change of waggons was obligatory during the day, whereas an English carter drove straight on, too long, in fact, for his custom was to keep on the move from dawn till sunset. The Dutchman, in addition, was usually drunk and drove his mares (always mares) like a madman, and passengers found it advisable, besides, to wear spectacles to protect their eyes against the sand thrown up by the road-menders. All waggons were provided with awnings, of cloth or leather.
In Italy and Spain practically all traffic was four-footed. Post-horses were always for hire in Italy, with a bit of fur attached to their bridles to mark their status. The owner gave the hirer a ticket to show his host at the end of the day's journey, who would then take care of the horse until a return fare was forthcoming; no security was asked. It was a novel experience for most foreigners to ride one post-horse all day: in England the stages were ten miles; in France, in the seventeenth century, four or five, so that a traveller in a hurry would change horses as many as eighteen to twenty-two times a day. The reason for the difference lay in the pace, the standard for which was much lower in a country like Italy, where mules and asses were habitually used. In fact, when the pace was set by the mules, as, for instance, in the Rome-Naples caravans, all who accompanied which had to keep together for fear of robbers, a man might be in the saddle all day and cover no more than twenty miles. As for wheeled traffic, it may be imagined from the state of the roads that the pace often sank to nothing at all. After several breakdowns, one traveller writes: "Advanced that day as far as the cursed carriages would give us leave, and the rest of the day practised Christian patience.... Carts ought to be put in the Litany."
The above must be understood as leaving Muscovy out of account, for that was the one country where the journey itself could, under favourable circumstances, be continued with comfort. Once the ground was hard enough for sledges, the traveller could travel night and day and yet sleep as long as he felt inclined. Nor did the gain end with positive comfort and double the available time, since the diminished strain on the horses enabled them to go at a greater pace for a longer period. Twelve leagues without a change of horses and a hundred leagues in three days represent what was practicable in the ordinary way amid a Russian winter; treble what would be reckoned good for any conveyance elsewhere.
In Dante's "Purgatorio" (II, 11-12) is a comparison well commented on, unconsciously, in these travel-books. It is when he speaks of himself wandering
Come gente che pensa a suo cammino,
Che va col core, e col corpo dimora.
Three hundred years later, sign-posts were still as rare as unicorn-horns. One mile north of Rimini, where the road forked, stood a chapel between the two turnings, on one side of it written, "La Strada di Ravenna," on the other, "La Strada di Bologna"; and the roads round Freiburg were planted with trees to mark the way, for the benefit of citizens, however, rather than of strangers, because of the mouths of the silver mines which would otherwise have been man-traps. Something of the kind, too, was put up in Holland when snow hid the roads. More to the point will it be to quote John Smith's account of his escape from Tartary, and how he found pictorial sign-posts at cross-roads, the way to Christian Muscovy being indicated by the sign of the Cross; to Crim Tartary by a half-moon; while a black man with white spots meant Persia; a sun, China; and minor princes' territories were pointed out by the emblems they had adopted. But these were really out of Europe and those of Freiburg and Holland outlined the road rather than indicated directions, as did the poles erected on the Col di Tenda Alpine-pass for a mile together, each pole a spear's length from the next. The Simplon and Mt. Cenis passes were thus marked out also—when the poles had not been blown flat by the wind.