A considerable saving might be effected by hiring a Janizary at seven aspers [2s.] a day: his services more than paid for his keep; and there were times when even a Frank found himself living at an easy rate. This happened when he stayed at a "fondaco," or depôt of Christian traders, or so it may be inferred from casual remarks backed up by two definite instances in years far apart. The German Fürer lived so at Alexandria and Cairo for the equivalent of five shillings a day in 1565, and in 1625 two Germans[125] were received for two months free of all charges at the Venetian "fondaco" at Cairo.
Far above all economies, however, was the system known as "putting-out" money—and this applied to travel inside, as well as outside, Christendom. The mediæval custom of presenting offerings before starting had died out; sixteenth-century tourists only offered prayers, and, for the rest, often expected to take up, at their homecoming, all they had left behind them with additions, or even multiplication. They deposited, or "put out," money before their departure on that condition. The custom is said to have been developed in the Netherlands[126] during the first half of the sixteenth century out of a pilgrims' practice of leaving a will behind them in favour of a friend on the understanding that the pilgrim was to receive double the bequest if he came back. It would seem from what Moryson says that the custom was barely known in England till the last decade of the sixteenth century, and then spread so rapidly that it fell into disrepute, bankrupts employing it to reinstate themselves, and actors, then the scum of the populace, to gain notoriety. He apologises for his brother Henry doing it, who put out four hundred pounds to be repaid twelve hundred pounds if he came back from Jerusalem. If allusions to the practice in contemporary English literature[127] can be trusted, he drove a bad bargain; according to them he might have arranged for his hypothetical profit to be five hundred instead of three hundred per cent, the latter rate being granted against journeys to Italy. The only other instance known of an actual transaction of this kind was calculated to yield two thousand per cent [£10 to be repaid £200]; but this was against a voyage to Russia, near the middle of the century, from London, whence only one ship was known to have sailed thither and returned.
Life insurance in its present form was also adopted by some persons before starting for abroad; but public opinion condemned every form of life insurance equally as immoral, and in the Netherlands, France, and Genoa it was forbidden by law, "travel-wagers" being specially mentioned in the proclamations. The rate, however, is the point which specially concerns us here, as indicative of the risks of travel. At the present day, for all the parts of the world touched upon in this book, the safest insurance company will not only lay fifty to one that the traveller will return, in place of the rate then of three to five to one that he would not, but will further insure him against accidents at a lower rate than if he became a London butcher. The system is of interest, too, as marking the transition from mediæval to modern methods of insurance; from "protections" granted by the stronger to the weaker for a premium which took the form of personal service, to the capitalist's bond; the guarantee of redress by force being superseded by guarantee of reimbursement by a business man, because the latter had become both more feasible and more satisfactory.
It is clear, then, that, given the most favourable circumstances, the traveller might not only make his journeys pay their own expenses, but might clear a handsome profit. Yet how far these circumstances were made the most of is a question that has at present to be decided on negative evidence alone, the verdict on which must be that no case is made out. In leaving, therefore, the general estimates for details, both have to be put forward as net, subject to the mitigations already referred to.
The fare from Dover to Calais was five shillings throughout this period. So invariable was this charge that when a certain boatman was suspected of being in league with the Roman Catholic seminarists in France because he conveyed across some ladies who were religious fugitives, he was considered not guilty on its being ascertained that he had charged them one pound each for the passage.[128] This five-shilling charge did not include the cost of boarding and landing when that required, as so often happened, the use of small boats, or of porters wading out. Between Flushing and Gravesend 6s. 8d. seems to have been the fare.[129]
A PASSENGER-BOAT FROM PADUA
Among the reasons for the preference of travel by water rather than by land, one was economy. In the case of tolls, for example, the case has been exactly reversed. As locks did not exist there were no river-dues; but of highway-tolls plenty; moreover, it often cost something to cross a bridge but never a sou to pass under it. As for ferries, the ferryman occasionally made the passengers pay what he pleased by collecting fares in the middle of the river. Yet another reason which raised the cost of road-travel as against river-travel lay in the latter affording far fewer chances to robbers, which also told on the direct expense by eliminating payments to escorts.
The contrast, of course, between horse and boat was much greater than between waggon and boat. In fact, the choice between the latter pair was many times a matter of comfort rather than of cost; the fares for both, in all normal cases but one where they can be exactly determined, varying from three farthings to a penny ha'penny a mile. To compare this with existing railway fares we may strike an average and say sixpence a mile; but the charges will be found to approach the minimum more often on the river than in the waggon. A typical instance is the five stivers [2s. 6d.] on the nine-mile canal between Haarlem and Amsterdam, and the lowest, the exception just spoken of, is the sixteen soldi [3s. 6d.] for the twenty-four miles by river and lagoon between Venice and Padua, recorded by Villamont in 1591, and by Van Buchell in 1587. One disadvantage common to both cart and boat must not be forgotten—that, to profit by this relative cheapness, the traveller had to form one of a party; if no party was ready he had to wait till one collected. Sir Henry Wotton, to take one example out of many, once wanted to go by waggon from Brunswick to Frankfort, about one hundred and fifty miles; had he started on the spot he would have started alone and paid at the rate of 4s. 6d. a mile of our money. He waited a week before two disreputable specimens turned up to share the expense.