A Tramp Abroad
woman. This study was exhibited in the Paris Salon of 1879, but did not
take any medal; they do not give medals for studies.
We discharged the carriage at the bridge. The river was full of
logs--long, slender, barkless pine logs--and we leaned on the rails
of the bridge, and watched the men put them together into rafts. These
rafts were of a shape and construction to suit the crookedness and
extreme narrowness of the Neckar. They were from fifty to one hundred
yards long, and they gradually tapered from a nine-log breadth at their
sterns, to a three-log breadth at their bow-ends. The main part of the
steering is done at the bow, with a pole; the three-log breadth there
furnishes room for only the steersman, for these little logs are not
larger around than an average young lady's waist. The connections of the
several sections of the raft are slack and pliant, so that the raft
may be readily bent into any sort of curve required by the shape of the
river.
The Neckar is in many places so narrow that a person can throw a dog
across it, if he has one; when it is also sharply curved in such places,
the raftsman has to do some pretty nice snug piloting to make the turns.
The river is not always allowed to spread over its whole bed--which is
as much as thirty, and sometimes forty yards wide--but is split into
three equal bodies of water, by stone dikes which throw the main
volume, depth, and current into the central one. In low water these neat
narrow-edged dikes project four or five inches above the surface, like
the comb of a submerged roof, but in high water they are overflowed. A
hatful of rain makes high water in the Neckar, and a basketful produces
an overflow.
There are dikes abreast the Schloss Hotel, and the current is violently
swift at that point. I used to sit for hours in my glass cage, watching
the long, narrow rafts slip along through the central channel, grazing
the right-bank dike and aiming carefully for the middle arch of the
stone bridge below; I watched them in this way, and lost all this time
hoping to see one of them hit the bridge-pier and wreck itself sometime
or other, but was always disappointed. One was smashed there one
morning, but I had just stepped into my room a moment to light a pipe,
so I lost it.
While I was looking down upon the rafts that morning in Heilbronn, the
daredevil spirit of adventure came suddenly upon me, and I said to my
comrades:
“I am going to Heidelberg on a raft. Will you venture with me?”
Their faces paled a little, but they assented with as good a grace as
they could. Harris wanted to cable his mother--thought it his duty to
do that, as he was all she had in this world--so, while he attended to
this, I went down to the longest and finest raft and hailed the captain
with a hearty “Ahoy, shipmate!” which put us upon pleasant terms at
once, and we entered upon business. I said we were on a pedestrian tour
to Heidelberg, and would like to take passage with him. I said this
partly through young Z, who spoke German very well, and partly through
Mr. X, who spoke it peculiarly. I can UNDERSTAND German as well as the
maniac that invented it, but I TALK it best through an interpreter.
The captain hitched up his trousers, then shifted his quid thoughtfully.
Presently he said just what I was expecting he would say--that he had no
license to carry passengers, and therefore was afraid the law would be
after him in case the matter got noised about or any accident happened.
So I CHARTERED the raft and the crew and took all the responsibilities
on myself.
With a rattling song the starboard watch bent to their work and hove
the cable short, then got the anchor home, and our bark moved off with a
stately stride, and soon was bowling along at about two knots an hour.
Our party were grouped amidships. At first the talk was a little gloomy,
and ran mainly upon the shortness of life, the uncertainty of it, the
perils which beset it, and the need and wisdom of being always prepared
for the worst; this shaded off into low-voiced references to the dangers
of the deep, and kindred matters; but as the gray east began to redden
and the mysterious solemnity and silence of the dawn to give place
to the joy-songs of the birds, the talk took a cheerier tone, and our
spirits began to rise steadily.
Germany, in the summer, is the perfection of the beautiful, but nobody
has understood, and realized, and enjoyed the utmost possibilities of
this soft and peaceful beauty unless he has voyaged down the Neckar on
a raft. The motion of a raft is the needful motion; it is gentle,
and gliding, and smooth, and noiseless; it calms down all feverish
activities, it soothes to sleep all nervous hurry and impatience; under
its restful influence all the troubles and vexations and sorrows that
harass the mind vanish away, and existence becomes a dream, a charm,
a deep and tranquil ecstasy. How it contrasts with hot and perspiring
pedestrianism, and dusty and deafening railroad rush, and tedious
jolting behind tired horses over blinding white roads!
We went slipping silently along, between the green and fragrant banks,
with a sense of pleasure and contentment that grew, and grew, all the
time. Sometimes the banks were overhung with thick masses of willows
that wholly hid the ground behind; sometimes we had noble hills on one
hand, clothed densely with foliage to their tops, and on the other hand
open levels blazing with poppies, or clothed in the rich blue of
the corn-flower; sometimes we drifted in the shadow of forests, and
sometimes along the margin of long stretches of velvety grass, fresh and
green and bright, a tireless charm to the eye. And the birds!--they were
everywhere; they swept back and forth across the river constantly, and
their jubilant music was never stilled.
It was a deep and satisfying pleasure to see the sun create the new
morning, and gradually, patiently, lovingly, clothe it on with splendor
after splendor, and glory after glory, till the miracle was complete.
How different is this marvel observed from a raft, from what it is when
one observes it through the dingy windows of a railway-station in some
wretched village while he munches a petrified sandwich and waits for the
train.
A TRAMP ABROAD, Part 3.
By Mark Twain
(Samuel L. Clemens)
First published in 1880
Illustrations taken from an 1880 First Edition
* * * * * *
ILLUSTRATIONS:
1. PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR
2. TITIAN'S MOSES
3. THE AUTHOR'S MEMORIES
73. A DEEP AND TRANQUIL ECSTACY
74. “WHICH ANSWERED JUST AS WELL”
75. LIFE ON A RAFT
76. LADY GERTRUDE
77. MOUTH OF THE CAVERN
78. A FATAL MISTAKE
79. TAIL PIECE
80. RAFTING ON THE NECKAR
81. THE LORELEI
82. THE LOVER's FATE
84. THE UNKNOWN KNIGHT
85. THE EMBRACE
86. PERILOUS POSTTION
87. THE RAFT IN A STORM
88. ALL SAFE ON SHORE
89. “IT WAS THE CAT”
90. TAILPIECE
91. BREAKFAST IN THE GARDEN 162
92. EASILY UNDERSTOOD
93. EXPERIMENTING THROUGH HARRIS
94. AT THE BALL ROOM DOOR
95. THE TOWN OF DILSBERG
96. OUR ADVANCE ON DILSBERG
97. INSIDE THE TOWN
95. THE OLD WELL
99. SEND HITHER THE LORD ULRICH
100. LEAD ME TO HER GRAVE
102. AN EXCELLENT PILOT, ONCE
103. SCATTERATION
104. THE RIVER BATH
101. ETRUSCAN TEAR JUG
106. HENRI II. PLATE
l07. OLD BLUE CHINA
108. A REAL ANTIQUE
109. BRIC-A-BRAC SHOP
110. “PUT IT THERE”
111. THE PARSON CAPTURED
112. TAIL PIECE
113. A COMPREHENSIVE YAWN
114. TESTING THE COIN
115. BEAUTY AT THE BATH
116. IN THE BATH
117. JERSEY INDIANS
118. NOT PARTICULARLY SOCIABLE
CONTENTS:
CHAPTER XV Down the River--German Women's Duties--Bathing as We Went--A
Handsome Picture: Girls in the Willows--We Sight a Tug--Steamers on the
Neckar--Dinner on Board--Legend “Cave of the Spectre “--Lady Gertrude
the Heiress--The Crusader--The Lady in the Cave--A Tragedy
CHAPTER XVI An Ancient Legend of the Rhine--“The Lorelei”--Count
Hermann--Falling in Love--A Sight of the Enchantress--Sad Effect
on Count Hermann--An Evening visit--A Sad Mistake--Count Hermann
Drowned--The Song and Music--Different Trans lations--Curiosities in
Titles
CHAPTER XVII Another Legend--The Unconquered Monster--The Unknown Knight
--His Queer Shaped Knapsack--The Knight Pitied and Advised--He Attacks
the Monster--Victory for the Fire Extinguisher--The Knight rewarded--His
Strange Request----Spectacles Made Popular--Danger to the Raft--Blasting
Rocks--An Inglorious Death in View--Escaped--A Storm Overtakes
us--GreatDanger--Man Overboard--Breakers Ahead--Springing a Leak--Ashore
Safe--A General Embracing--A Tramp in the Dark--The Naturalist Tavern--A
Night's Troubles--“It is the Cat”
CHAPTER XVIII Breakfast in a Garden--The Old Raven--Castle of
Hirschhorn--Attempt to Hire a Boat--High Dutch--What You Can Find out
by Enquiring--What I Found out about the Students--A good German
Custom--Harris Practices It--AnEmbarrassing Position--A Nice Party--At a
Ball--Stopped at the Door--Assistance at Hand and Rendered--Worthy to be
an Empress
CHAPTER XIX Arrive at Neckarsteinach--Castle of Dilsberg--A Walled
Town--On a Hill--Exclusiveness of the People--A Queer Old Place--An
Ancient Well--An Outlet Proved--Legend of Dilsberg Castle--The
Haunted Chamber--The Betrothed's request--The Knight's Slumbers
and Awakening--Horror of the Lover--The Wicked Jest--The Lover a
Maniac--Under the Linden--Turning Pilot--Accident to the Raft--Fearful
Disaster
CHAPTER XX Good News--“Slow Freight”--Keramics--My Collection of Bric-a-
brac--My Tear Jug--Henri II. Plate--Specimen of Blue China--Indifference
to the Laugh of the World--I Discover an Antique En-route to
Baden--Baden--Meeting an Old Acquaintance--A young American--Embryo
Horse Doctor--An American, Sure--A Minister Captured
CHAPTER XXI Baden--Baden--Energetic Girls--A Comprehensive Yawn--A
Beggar's Trick--Cool Impudence--The Bath Woman--Insolence of Shop
Keepers--Taking a Bath--Early and Late Hours--Popular Belief Regarding
Indians--An Old Cemetery--A Pious Hag--Curious Table Companions
CHAPTER XV
[Charming Waterside Pictures]
Men and women and cattle were at work in the dewy fields by this time.
The people often stepped aboard the raft, as we glided along the grassy
shores, and gossiped with us and with the crew for a hundred yards or
so, then stepped ashore again, refreshed by the ride.
Only the men did this; the women were too busy. The women do all kinds
of work on the continent. They dig, they hoe, they reap, they sow, they
bear monstrous burdens on their backs, they shove similar ones long
distances on wheelbarrows, they drag the cart when there is no dog or
lean cow to drag it--and when there is, they assist the dog or cow. Age
is no matter--the older the woman the stronger she is, apparently.
On the farm a woman's duties are not defined--she does a little of
everything; but in the towns it is different, there she only does
certain things, the men do the rest. For instance, a hotel chambermaid
has nothing to do but make beds and fires in fifty or sixty rooms, bring
towels and candles, and fetch several tons of water up several flights
of stairs, a hundred pounds at a time, in prodigious metal pitchers. She
does not have to work more than eighteen or twenty hours a day, and
she can always get down on her knees and scrub the floors of halls and
closets when she is tired and needs a rest.
As the morning advanced and the weather grew hot, we took off our
outside clothing and sat in a row along the edge of the raft and enjoyed