Cologne.—This is a regular Golgotha—the skulls of the Magi, par excellence, and then the skulls of Saint Ursula and her 11,000 virgins. I wonder where she collected so many! Saint Ursula brought a great force into the field, at all events, and, I presume, commands the right wing of the whole army of martyrs. I went into the golden chamber, where there are some really pretty things. The old fellow handed us the articles one after another, but I observed that there were many things which I had seen when here before, which were not presented to view, so I looked into the cabinet and found them. They were crystal vases, mounted with gold and precious stones. One had the thigh-bone of Saint Sebastian; another, part of the ulna of Saint Lawrence; and a third a bit of the petticoat of the Virgin Mary. I handed them out to the ladies, and asked him why he did not show us those as he used to do before. The old man smiled and turned the corners of his mouth down, as if to say, “Its all humbug!” Relics are certainly at a discount, even among the Catholics.
I question whether the Bridge of Boats at Cologne don’t pay better than any other in the whole world, although by no means the handsomest; the stream of passengers on it all day is as strong and as wide as the Rhine itself. As for Cologne, the best thing that could happen to it is to be burnt down. Narrow streets, badly ventilated, badly drained; your nose is visited with a thousand varieties of smell as you pass along; and the Eau de Cologne in the gutters is very different in savour from that which you buy in the bottles.
We had a pleasant passage from Cologne to Coblentz, and from thence to Mayence, because we had pleasant company. It is singular, but it is a fact, that you go on board a steamboat to avoid fatigue, and each night you are more tired than if you had travelled by land. You go to avoid dust and heat; the first is exchanged for blacks out of the funnel, and you are more dirty than if you had travelled twice the distance; and the heat is about the same; in these points you certainly gain nothing. The expense of these Rhine steamboats is very great. By a calculation I made—to travel by post, five persons in a carriage, from Cologne to Strasburg—you will expend 200 and odd francs less than by the steam conveyance. In time you certainly lose by steam, as you are four days and a half going to Strasburg, and by land carriage it is half the distance, being only forty-five posts.
Neither do you save trouble; for the steam-boats being changed every evening, you have to take your luggage on shore, shift it from one to the other, and, at the very time that you are least inclined to do anything, independent of an enormous expense which you ought not to pay, but cannot well resist.
Now, as you really gain nothing in the above points, it is at least to be supposed that you gain in the picturesque; but this is not the case: and I have no hesitation in asserting that those who go up the Rhine are generally disappointed, although they do not like to say so. They expect too much.—The vivid descriptions, the steel engravings, have raised their anticipations too high; and they find that the reality is not equal to the efforts of the pen and pencil. Several of the passengers acknowledged to me that they were disappointed; and I must confess that I hardly knew the Rhine again. When I travelled up the Rhine by land I thought it beautiful; but in a steam-boat it was tame.
This was observed by others, besides myself, who had ascended both by steam and by the road running close to the banks; and the reason was simple. When you travel by land you have the whole breadth of the Rhine as a foreground to the scenery of the opposite bank, and this you lose by water; and the bank you travel on is much more grand from its towering above you, and also from the sharp angles and turns which so suddenly change the scenery. Abruptness greatly assists the picturesque: the Rhine loses half its beauty viewed from a steam-boat. I have ascended it in both ways, and I should recommend all travellers to go up by land. The inconveniences in a steam-boat are many. You arrive late and find the hotel crowded, and you are forced to rise very early (as Mayence at three o’clock in the morning), which, with a family, is no trifle. The only part of the Rhine worth seeing is from Cologne to Mayence; below Cologne and above Mayence it is without interest; and although between these two places the steam-boats are well served, above Mayence everything is very uncomfortable, and you are liable to every species of exaction.
If I were to plan a tour up the Rhine for any friends, I should advise them not to go by the Rotterdam steamer; it is a long voyage and without interest, and with many inconveniences; but start in the steamer to Antwerp, go up to Brussels by the rail-road; from thence you will start for Cologne by the route of Namur and Liege through Waterloo; and I rather expect that many will prefer the banks of the Meuse to the Rhine. I know nothing more beautiful than the road from Namur as far as Chaude Fontaine, although compared to the Rhine it is on a miniature scale. From Liege to Aix-la-Chapelle, and from thence to Cologne. Go up the Rhine by land as far as Mayence, and then you may do as you please. When you are coming back, descend by the steam-boats; for then you go with the stream and with great rapidity, and arrive in good time at the towns where they stop. You will then have seen the Rhine by land and by water.
At present the bubble is at its height; but it will burst by-and-by. The English are lining the banks of the Rhine with gold, and receive insult and abuse in exchange. I have been much amused with a young countryman who has come up in the steamer with me. Not able to speak a word of French or German, he is pillaged every hour of the day; but if he could speak, he has no idea of the value of his money. He pulls out his purse, and the waiters help themselves—very plentifully, I may safely add. What he has come for it is difficult to say: not for the picturesque, for he slept the whole time between Cologne and Mayence—that is, all the time that was not occupied by eating and drinking. His only object appears to be to try the Rhenish wines. He has tried all upon the Wein Presen. He called for a bottle of the best; they gave him one not on the carte, and charged him exactly one pound sterling for the bottle. He is a generous fellow; he sits at the table with his bottle before him, and invites every man to partake of it. And he found plenty on board who were willing to oblige him.
“Capital wine, an’t it?” said he to a Frenchman who drank his wine, but did not understand a word of English.
“A votre santé, Monsieur,” replied the Frenchman.