Recollections of Europe. James Fenimore Cooper
a passport, when we were about to quit Havre. The office hours were over, and the steam-boat could not wait. "Were is Désirée?" Désirée was made acquainted with the difficulty, and the passport was obtained. "Désirée, où est Désirée?" cried some one in the crowd, that had assembled to see the Camilla start for England, the day after our arrival. "Here is an Englishman who is too late to get his passport viséd," said this person to Désirée, so near me that I heard it all; "the boat goes in ten minutes—what is to be done?"—"Ma foi—it is too late!" "Try, ma bonne—it's a pity he should lose his passage—voici." The Englishman gave his fee. Désirée looked about her, and then taking the idler by the arm, she hurried him through the crowd, this way and that way, ending by putting him aboard without any passport at all. "It is too late to get one," she said; "and they can but send you back." He passed undetected. France has a plenty of these managing females, though Désirée is one of the cleverest of them all. I understood this woman had passed a year or two in England, expressly to fit herself for her present occupation, by learning the language.
While engaged in taking our passages on board the steam-boat for Rouen, some one called me by name, in English. The sound of the most familiar words, in one's own language, soon get to be startling in a foreign country. I remember, on returning to England, after an absence of five years, that it was more than a week before I could persuade myself I was not addressed whenever a passer-by spoke suddenly. On the present occasion, I was called to by an old schoolboy acquaintance, Mr. H——r, who was a consul in England, but who had taken a house on what is called the Côte, a hill-side, just above Ingouville, a village at no great distance from the town. We went out to his pretty little cottage, which enjoyed a charming view. Indeed I should particularize this spot as the one which gave me the first idea of one species of distinctive European scenery. The houses cling to the declivity, rising above each other in a way that might literally enable one to toss a stone into his neighbour's chimney-top. They are of stone, but being whitewashed, and very numerous, they give the whole mountain-side the appearance of a pretty hamlet, scattered without order in the midst of gardens. Italy abounds with such little scenes; nor are they unfrequent in France, especially in the vicinity of towns; though whitened edifices are far from being the prevailing taste of that country.
That evening we had an infernal clamour of drums in the principal street, which happened to be our own. There might have been fifty, unaccompanied by any wind instrument. The French do not use the fife, and when one is treated to the drum, it is generally in large potions, and nothing but drum. This is a relic of barbarism, and is quite unworthy of a musical age. There is more or less of it in all the garrisoned towns of Europe. You may imagine the satisfaction with which one listens to a hundred or two of these plaintive instruments, beat between houses six or eight stories high, in a narrow street, and with desperate perseverance! The object is to recall the troops to their quarters.
Havre is a tide-harbour. In America, where there is, on an average, not more than five feet of rise and fall to the water of the sea, such a haven would, of course, be impracticable for large vessels. But the majority of the ports on the British Channel are of this character, and indeed a large portion of the harbours of Great Britain. Calais, Boulogne, Havre, and Dieppe, are all inaccessible at low water. The cliffs are broken by a large ravine, a creek makes up the gorge, or a small stream flows outward into the sea, a basin is excavated, the entrance is rendered safe by moles which project into deep water, and the town is crowded around this semi-artificial port as well as circumstances will allow. Such is, more or less, the history of them all. Havre, however, is in some measure an exception. It stands on a plain, that I should think had once been a marsh. The cliffs are near it, seaward, and towards the interior there are fine receding hills, leaving a sufficient site, notwithstanding, for a town of large dimensions.
The port of Havre has been much improved of late years. Large basins have been excavated, and formed into regular wet docks. They are nearly in the centre of the town. The mole stretches out several hundred yards on that side of the entrance of the port which is next the sea. Here signals are regularly made to acquaint vessels in the offing with the precise number of feet that can be brought into the port. These signals are changed at the rise or fall of every foot, according to a graduated scale which is near the signal pole. At dead low water the entrance to the harbour, and the outer harbour itself, are merely beds of soft mud. Machines are kept constantly at work to deepen them.
The ship from sea makes the lights, and judges of the state of the tide by the signals. She rounds the Mole-Head at the distance of fifty or sixty yards, and sails along a passage too narrow to admit another vessel, at the same moment, into the harbour. Here she finds from eighteen to twenty, or even twenty-four feet of water, according to circumstances. She is hauled up to the gates of a dock, which are opened at high water only. As the water falls, one gate is shut, and the entrance to the dock becomes a lock: vessels can enter, therefore, as long as there remains sufficient water in the outer harbour for a ship to float. If caught outside, however, she must lie in the mud until the ensuing tide.
Havre is the sea-port of Paris, and is rapidly increasing in importance. There is a project for connecting the latter with the sea by a ship channel. Such a project is hardly suited to the French impulses, which imagine a thousand grand projects, but hardly ever convert any of them to much practical good. The opinions of the people are formed on habits of great saving, and it requires older calculations, greater familiarity with risks, and more liberal notions of industry, and, possibly, more capital than is commonly found in their enterprises, to induce the people to encounter the extra charges of these improvements, when they can have recourse to what, in their eyes, are simpler and safer means of making money. The government employs men of science, who conceive well; but their conceptions are but indifferently sustained by the average practical intellect of the country. In this particular France is the very converse of America.
The project of making a sea-port of Paris, is founded on a principle that is radically wrong. It is easier to build a house on the sea-side, than to carry the sea into the interior. But the political economy of France, like that of nearly all the continental nations, is based on a false principle, that of forcing improvements. The intellects of the mass should first be acted on, and when the public mind is sufficiently improved to benefit by innovations, the public sentiment might be trusted to decide the questions of locality and usefulness. The French system looks to a concentration of everything in Paris. The political organization of the country favours such a scheme, and in a project of this sort, the interests of all the northern and western departments would be sacrificed to the interests of Paris. As for the departments east and south of Paris, they would in no degree be benefited by making a port of Paris, as goods would still have to be transshipped to reach them. A system of canals and railroads is much wanted in France, and most of all, a system of general instruction, to prepare the minds of the operatives to profit by such advantages. When I say that we are behind our facts in America, I do not mean in a physical, but in a moral sense. All that is visible and tangible is led by opinion; in all that is purely moral, the facts precede the notions of the people.
I found, at a later day, many droll theories broached in France, more especially in the Chamber of Deputies, on the subject of our own great success in the useful enterprises. As is usual, in such cases, any reason but the true one was given. At the period of our arrival in Europe, the plan of connecting the great lakes with the Atlantic had just been completed, and the vast results were beginning to attract attention in Europe. At first, it was thought, as a matter of course, that engineers from the old world had been employed. This was disproved, and it was shown that they who laid out the work, however skilful they may have since become by practice, were at first little more than common American surveyors. Then the trifling cost was a stumbling-block, for labour was known to be far better paid in America than in Europe; and lastly, the results created astonishment. Several deputies affirmed that the cause of the great success was owing to the fact, that in America we trusted such things to private competition, whereas, in France, the government meddled with everything. But it was the state governments, (which indeed alone possess the necessary means and authority,) that had caused most of the American canals to be constructed. These political economists knew too little of other systems to apply a clever saying of their own—Il y a de la Rochefoucald, et de la Rouchefoucald. All governments do not wither what they touch.
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