Touring in 1600: A Study in the Development of Travel as a Means of Education. E. S. Bates
through French pirates. So in 1600 we find the Mayor of Exeter writing up about the Dunkirkers, "scarce one bark in five escapeth these cormorants."[31] Repression that was exercised by the governments on both sides of the Channel had the effect of making the Mediterranean worse than it had been, for the pirates, especially English, not only followed their occupation there themselves but taught the Turks and Algerines far more about navigation than the latter would have discovered by themselves. Which, by the way, had a further result adverse to English tourists, for the Italian states that had previously been favourably inclined to England, Venice and Tuscany, both of European importance, grew unfriendly; Tuscany becoming definitely hostile.
But the state of the Mediterranean for men of all nationalities was such that it would probably be difficult to find a detailed account of a voyage during the first half of the seventeenth century which does not mention meeting an enemy. What might happen then is best illustrated in the experience of a Russian monk of rather earlier date: "half-way, a ship full of pirates attacked us. When their cannon had shattered our boat, they leapt on board like savage beasts and cut the ship's master to pieces and threw him into the sea, and took all they found. As for me, they gave me a blow in the stomach with the butt-end of a lance, saying 'Monk, give us a ducat or a gold piece.' I swore by the living God, by God Almighty, that I had none such. They bereft me of my all, leaving me nought but my frock and took to running all about the ship like wild beasts waving glittering lances, swords and axes. … "
Storms also were accompanied by incidents out of a present-day tourist's experience, to a greater extent than would readily be imagined; and this especially in the Mediterranean, where a large proportion of the sailors were Greeks with vivid superstitions, and courage but one day a year, that of St. Catherine, the patroness of sailors, when nobody ever got drowned. Other days it required very little danger to make them abandon themselves to despair and to all the signs of it which were most likely to distract and demoralise the more level-headed; one by one their relics would go overboard in attempted propitiation, and the tourist was in danger of following in person if he was suspected of being no good Christian and therefore the probable cause of the storm. Such is the recorded experience of more than one; and a priest who had been in the habit of reading a Bible was threatened with ejection as a sorcerer, and his books with him; fortunately the storm abated when the sailors had reached that point.
It may safely be said that control of the weather by sorcerers was altogether disbelieved in by very few persons then, but if the belief was held more strongly along one coast-line than another, it was round the Baltic rather than elsewhere. As late as 1670[32] a traveller tells us how being becalmed off Finland, the captain sent ashore to buy a wind from a wizard; the fee was ten kroner (say thirty-six shillings) and a pound of tobacco. The wizard tied a woollen rag to the mast, with three knots in it. Untying the first knot produces just the wind they want; S. W.; that slackening, untying knot number two revives it for a time; but knot number three brings up a fearful northeaster which nearly sank them. "Qui nescit orare, discat navigare" was a much-quoted phrase; truly enough of one traveller, it would appear, seeing he is reported to have prayed during a storm; "O Lord, I am no common beggar; I do not trouble thee every day; for I never prayed to thee before; and if it please thee to deliver me this once, I will never pray to thee again as long as I live."
Shipwreck had an additional danger when it happened to a galley rowed by forced labour. Cardinal De Retz gives a vivid picture of what happened when the one he was in ran aground. The whole bank of galley-slaves rose; in fear, or to escape by swimming, or to master the vessel amidst the confusion. The commander and other officers took double-edged swords and struck down all whom they found standing. Even a mere landing was not without risk, for the custom in force almost universally of asking every new-comer officially his business, home, destination, was still more the rule at the coast; this same cardinal, when a fugitive landing in shabby clothes at St. Sebastian, was told by the soldiers he would probably be hanged in the morning, inasmuch as the ship's captain had mislaid his "charte-partie," in the absence of which every one in the ship could legally be hanged without trial.
And if they had their special sea-troubles of pirates and Greek sailors and small boats in high seas, how much more certain was sea-sickness and the length of its enduring. Lauder remembered leaving Dover at 2 A. M.—"What a distressed broker I was upon the sea needs not here be told since it's not to be feared that I'll forget it, yet I cannot but tell how Mr. John Kincead and I had a bucket betwixt us and strove who should have the bucket first, both equally ready; and how at every vomit and gasp he gave he cried 'God's mercy' as if he had been about to expire immediately." For preventives nobody has anything to suggest except, appropriately enough, one Father Noah, a Franciscan, who prescribes pomegranates and mint; and Rabelais, who says that Pantagruel and company departed with full stomachs and for that reason were not sea-sick; a better precaution, he goes on, than drinking water some days beforehand, salt or fresh, with wine or meat, or than taking pulp of quinces, or lemon-peel, or pomegranate juice; or fasting previously, or covering their stomachs with paper.
Yet Panurge, who was always full or filling, became sea-sick when the storm came. As a picture of sea-sickness, Rabelais' account of Panurge sea-sick is probably unsurpassed. "He remained all of a heap on Deck, utterly cast down and metagrobolised. 'What ho, Steward, my Friend, my Father, my Uncle; … O, three and four times happy are those who plant Cabbages … they have always one Foot on Land and the other is not far from it. … This Wave will sweep us away, blessed Saviour. O my Friend, a little Vinegar; I sweat again with sheer Agony. … I am drowning, I am drowning, I am dying. Good people, I drown. … Ah, my Father, my Uncle, my All, the water has got into my Shoes, by my Shirt-collar. Bous, bous, bous; paisch; hu, hu, hu, ha, ha, ha, I drown … eighteen hundred thousand Crowns a year to the man who will put me ashore. … Holos, good People, I drown, I die. Consummatum est; it is all over with me. … My good man, couldn't you throw me ashore?'"[33]
Sea-sickness was probably more common then than now because the discomforts were so much farther from being minimised. Moryson recommends passengers to take rose leaves, lemons or oranges, or the roots or the leaves of angelica, cloves, or rosemary, to counteract the evil smells of the boat; he might have added, of the company too, more particularly with reference to river traffic, because there the company was specially liable to be mixed by reason of the cheapness of that way of travelling as compared with horseback; and because the contact with each other was close.
It is not without signification that practically all district-maps of this date mark the courses of rivers, but not of roads. Probably few records could be found of any touring of this period worth calling a tour which was not partly conducted by river. One advantage of river travel was that that way was more regularly practicable than the roads, which bad weather soon rendered barely passable. Moreover, it was the pleasantest mode of journeying, especially if the boat was towed; for travelling in a sixteenth-century waggon produced something like sea-sickness in those unaccustomed to it. On the other hand, to get the benefit of the cheapness of river travelling, as compared with riding, one had to wait, at times, for fellow-travellers to fill the boat; also, the choice of route was, of course, more limited; and on the swifter rivers it was not usual, or worth while, to attempt an up-stream journey.
On the Loire, for instance, at Roanne, where it began to be navigable, boats were all built for sale, not for hire, as they were not expected to come back; and the same practice was in use elsewhere. But this must be taken as a rule with many exceptions. On the lower Loire towing was in regular use and Lady Fanshawe, who tried it, right from Nantes to Orleans, says, "of all my travels none were, for travel sake, as I may call it, so pleasant as this." They went on shore to sleep, but kept to the boat all daytime, for it possessed a "hearth," a charcoal fire on which they did the cooking. Where towing was most frequently used was probably Russia, all by hand; sometimes as many as three hundred men were being employed at once by Charles II's ambassador for the six barges and one boat between Archangel and Vologda.
When rowing was to be done, the tourist found himself expected, practically compelled, to take his share on the Elbe and the Rhine, and often on other rivers too. The diarist Evelyn reckoned that he rowed twenty leagues of the distance between Roanne and Orleans, and no doubt Edmund Waller, the poet, did the same, as he was one of the party. If any exemptions were made, it was the boatman who exempted himself.
Another poet, or,