Next morning, as there was but a short row to Bâle, I took a good long rest in bed, and then carried the canoe half way across the bridge where a picturesque island is formed into a terraced garden, and here we launched the boat on the water. Although the knocks and strains of the last few days were very numerous, and many of them of portentous force, judging by the sounds they made, the Rob Roy was still hale and hearty, and the carpenter's mate had no damages to report to the captain. It was not until harder times came, in the remainder of the voyage, that her timbers suffered and her planks were tortured by rough usage.
A number of ladies patronized the start on this occasion, and as they waved their parasols and the men shouted Hoch! and Bravo! we glided down stream, the yellow paddle being waved round my head in an original mode of "salute," which I invented specially for returning friendly gratulations of this kind.
Speaking about Rheinfelden, Baedeker says, "Below the town another rapid of the Rhine forms a sort of whirlpool called the Höllenhaken," a formidable announcement, and a terrible name; but what is called here a "whirlpool" is not worth notice.
The sound of a railway train beside the river reminds you that this is not quite a strange, wild, unseen country. Reminds you I say, because really when you are in the river bed, you easily forget all that is beyond it on each side.
Let a landscape be ever so well known from the road, it becomes new again when you view it from the level of the water. For before the scene was bounded by a semicircle with the diameter on the horizon, and the arch of sky for its circumference. But when you are seated in the canoe, the picture changes to the form of a great sector, with its point on the clear water, and each radius inclining aloft through rocks, trees, and mossy banks, on this side and on that. And this holds good even on a well worn river like the Thames. The land-scenes between Oxford and London get pretty well known and admired by travellers, but the views will seem both fresh and fair if you row down the river through them. Nay, there are few rivers which have such lovely scenery as the Thames can show in its windings along that route.
But our canoe is now getting back to civilization, and away from that pleasant simplicity where everything done in the streets or the hotel is strange to a stranger. Here we have composite candles and therefore no snuffers; here the waiter insists on speaking English, and sitting down by me, and clutching my arm, he confidentially informs me that there are no "bean green," translating "haricots verts," but that perhaps I might like a "flower caul," so we assent to a cauliflower.
This is funny enough, but far more amusing is it when the woman waiter of some inland German village shouts louder German to you, because that she rattles out at first is not understood. She gazes with a new sensation at a guest who actually cannot comprehend her voluble words, and then guest and waiter burst into laughter.
Here too I saw a boat towed along the Rhine—a painful evidence of being near commerce, even though it was in a primitive style; not that there was any towing-path, but men walked among the bushes, pulling the boat with a rope, and often wading to do so. This sight told me at once that I had left the fine free forests where you might land anywhere, and it was sure to be lonely and charming.
After a few bends westward we come in sight of the two towers of Bâle, but the setting sun makes it almost impossible to see anything in its brightness, so we must only paddle on.
The bridge at Bâle was speedily covered by the idle and the curious as the canoe pulled up at an hotel a few yards from the water on Sept. 14th.