Not a wave had energy to rise on the lake in the hot sun. A sheep-bell tinkled now and then, but in a tired, listless, and irregular way. A gossamer spider had spun his web from my mast to the tree above, and wagtails hopped near me on the stones, and turned an inquiring little eye to the boat half in the water, and its master reclining on the grass. It was an easy paddle from this to the town of Constance, at the end of the lake.
Here a douanier made a descent upon me and was inexorable. "You must have the boat examined." "Very well, pray examine it." His Chief was absent, and I must put the canoe in the Custom-house till to-morrow morning. An hour was wasted in palaver about this, and at first I protested vigorously against such absurdity in "free Switzerland." But Constance is not in Switzerland, it is in the Grand Duchy of Baden, and so to keep it "grand," they must do very little things, and at any rate can trouble travellers. At length an obliging native, ashamed of the proceeding, remonstrated with the douanier, and persuaded him at least to search the boat and let it pass.
He took as much time to inspect as if she were a brig of 300 tons, and, when he came to look at the stern, I gravely pointed to a round hole cut in the partition for this very purpose! Into this hole he peered, while the crowd was hushed in silence, and as he saw nothing but darkness, extremely dark, for (nothing else was there), he solemnly pronounced the canoe "free," and she was duly borne to the hotel.
But Constance once had a man in it who was really "grand," John Huss, the noble martyr for the truth. In the Council Hall you see the veritable cell in which he was imprisoned some hundreds of years ago, and on a former visit I had seen, from the tower, through a telescope, the field where the faggots burned him, and from whence his great soul leaped up to heaven out of the blazing pile.
"Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold;
E'en them who kept thy truth so pure of old
When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones."
—Milton.
Does not a thought or two on such great things make other common things look small?
True and good—but we may not stop always in the lake to ponder thus, for the current is moving again, so let us launch the Rob Roy on our old friend, the Rhine.
It is a change to cross a quiet lake after being hurried on a rapid stream like the Danube, and now it is another change to paddle from the lake into a wide river like the Rhine, which speeds fast and steady among lively scenes. The water is deep, and of a faint blue, but clear enough to show what is below. The pebbly bottom seems to roll towards you from underneath, and village churches appear to spin quietly round on the banks, for the land and its things seem to move, not the water, so glassy its surface steadily flowing.
Here are the fishers again, slowly paying out their fine-spun nets, and there is a target-hut built on four piles in the river.