Having now delivered a homily on international talking, it is time to be on the move again.
CHAPTER VIII.
Sailing on Lucerne—Seeburg—River scenes—Night and snow—The Reuss—A dear dinner—Seeing a rope—Passing a fall—Bremgarten rapids.
When the steamer at Imyn had embarked the three sportsmen, and the little pier was quiet, we got a cart out for the Rob Roy, and bargained to have it rumbled over the hill to the Lake of Lucerne for the sum of five francs—it is only half-an-hour's walk. The landlord himself came as driver, for he was fully interested about the canoe, and he did not omit to let people know his sentiments on the subject all along the way, even calling out to the men plucking fruit in the apple-trees, who had perhaps failed to notice the phenomenon which was passing on the road beneath them. There was a permanent joke on such occasions, and, oddly enough, it was used by the drivers in Germany as well as in Switzerland, and was of course original and spontaneous with each of them as they called out, "Going to America!" and then chuckled at the brilliant remark.
The village we came to on Lucerne was the well-known Kussnacht, that is, one of the well-known Kussnachts, for there are plenty of these honeymoon towns in Central Europe; and with the customary assembly of quidnuncs, eloquently addressed this time by the landlord-driver, the canoe was launched on another lake, perhaps the prettiest lake in the world.
Like other people, and at other times, I had traversed this beautiful water of the Four Cantons, but those only who have seen it well by steamer and by walking, so as to know how it juts in and winds round in intricate geography, can imagine how much better you may follow and grasp its beauties by searching them out alone and in a canoe.
For thus I could penetrate all the wooded nooks, and dwell on each view-point, and visit the rocky islets, and wait long, longer—as long as I pleased before some lofty berg, while the ground-swell gently undulated, and the passing cloud shaded the hill with grey, and the red flag of a steamer fluttered in a distant sunbeam, and the plash of a barge's oar broke on the boatman's song; everything around changing just a little, and the stream of inward thought and admiration changing too as it flowed, but, all the time, and when the eye came back to it again, there was the grand mountain still the same,
"Like Teneriffe or Atlas unremoved."
How cool the snow looked up there aloft even in the heat of summer! and, to come down again to one's level on the water, how lively the steamer was with the music of its band and the quick beat of its wheels curling up white foam. Let us speed to meet it and to get a tossing in the swell, while Jones and Smith, under the awning, cry out, "Why, to be sure, that's the Rob Roy canoe," and Mrs. Jones and the three Miss Smiths all lift up their heads from their "Murrays," where they have been diligently reading the history of Switzerland from A.D. 1682, and then the description in words of all the scenery around, although they have suffered its speaking realities in mountain, wood, and lake to pass unnoticed.