Europe and elsewhere

by Mark Twain

I ran along the bank in the driving rain, and enjoyed the sight to the full. I never saw a finer show than the passage of that boat was, through the fierce turmoil of water. Alternately she rose high and plunged deep, throwing up sheets of foaming spray and shaking them off like a mane. Several times she seemed to fairly bury herself, and I thought she was gone for good, but always she sprang high aloft the next moment, a gallant and stirring spectacle to see. The Admiral’s steering was great. I had not seen the equal of it before.

The boat waited for me down at the Villebois bridge, and I presently caught up and went aboard. There was a stretch of a hundred yards of offensively rough water below the bridge, but it had no dangerous features about it. Still, I was obliged to claim that it had, and that these perils were much greater than the others.

Noon.--A mile of perpendicular precipices--very handsome. On the left, at the termination of this stately wall, a darling little old tree-grown ruin abreast a wooded islet with a large white mansion on it. Near that ruin nature has gotten up a clever counterfeit of one, tree-grown and all that, and, as its most telling feature, has furnished it a battered monolith that stands up out of the underbrush by itself and looks as if men had shaped it and put it there and time had gnawed it and worn it.

This is the prettiest piece of river we have found. All its aspects are dainty and gracious and alluring.

1 P.M.--Château de la Salette. This is the port of the Grotte de la Balme, “one of the seven wonders of Dauphiny.” It is across a plain in the face of a bluff a mile from the river. A grotto is out of the common order, and I should have liked to see this one, but the rains have made the mud very deep and it did not seem well to venture so long a trip through it.

2.15 P.M.--St.-Etienne. On a distant ridge inland a tall openwork structure commandingly situated, with a statue of the Virgin standing on it.

Immense empty freight barges being towed upstream by teams of two and four big horses--not on the bank, but under it; not on the land, but always in the water--sometimes breast deep--and around the big flat bars.

We reached a not very promising-looking village about four o’clock, and concluded to land; munching fruit and filling the hood with pipe smoke had grown monotonous. We could not have the hood furled, because the floods of rain fell unceasingly. The tavern was on the river bank, as is the custom. It was dull there, and melancholy--nothing to do but look out of the window into the drenching rain and shiver; one could do that, for it was bleak and cold and windy, and there was no fire. Winter overcoats were not sufficient; they had to be supplemented with rugs. The raindrops were so large and struck the river with such force that they knocked up the water like pebble splashes.

With the exception of a very occasional wooden-shod peasant, nobody was abroad in this bitter weather--I mean of our sex. But all weathers are alike to the women in these continental countries. To them and the other animals life is serious; nothing interrupts their slavery. Three of them were washing clothes in the river under the window when we arrived, and they continued at it as long as there was light to work by. One was apparently thirty; another--the mother?--above fifty; the third--grandmother?--so old and worn and gray she could have passed for eighty. They had no waterproofs or rubbers, of course; over their heads and shoulders they wore gunny sacks--simply conductors for rivers of water; some of the volume reached ground, the rest soaked in on the way.

At last a vigorous fellow of thirty-five arrived, dry and comfortable, smoking his pipe under his big umbrella in an open donkey cart--husband, son, and grandson of those women? He stood up in the cart, sheltering himself, and began to superintend, issuing his orders in a masterly tone of command, and showing temper when they were not obeyed swiftly enough. Without complaint or murmur the drowned women patiently carried out the orders, lifting the immense baskets of soaked clothing into the cart and stowing them to the man’s satisfaction. The cart being full now, he descended, with his umbrella, entered the tavern, and the women went drooping homeward in the wake of the cart, and soon were blended with the deluge and lost to sight. We would tar and feather that fellow in America, and ride him on a rail.