In the coffee-room a Frenchman, who had been in London, has just been instructing two Mexicans, who are going there, as to hotels, and it is excessively amusing to hear his description of the London "Caffy Hous," and the hotels in "Lyces-ter-squar." "It is pronounced squar," he said, "in England."
Private concert--Thunderer--La Hardt Forest--Mulhouse Canal--River Ill--Reading stories--Madame Nico--Night noises--Pets--Ducking--Vosges--Admirers--Boat on wheels--New wine.
Bâle is, in every sense, a turning-point on the Rhine. The course of the river here bends abruptly from west to north, and the character of the scenery beside it alters at once from high sloping banks to a widespread network of streams, all entangled in countless islands, and yet ever tending forward, northward, seaward through the great rich valley of the Rhine with mountain chains reared on each side like two everlasting barriers.
Here then we could start anew almost in any direction, and I had not settled yet what route to take, whether by the Saone and Doubs to paddle to the Rhone, and so descend to Marseilles, and coast by the Cornici road, and sell the boat at Genoa; or--and this second plan must be surely a better alternative, if by it we can avoid a sale of the Rob Roy--I could not part with her now--so let us at once decide to go back through France.
We were yet on the river slowly paddling when this decision was arrived at, and the river carried me still, for I determined not to leave its pleasant easy current for a slow canal, until the last possible opportunity. A diligent study of new maps procured at Bâle, showed that a canal ran northward nearly parallel to the Rhine, and approached very near to the river at one particular spot, which indeed looked hard enough to find even on the map, but was far more dubious when we got into a maze of streamlets and little rivers circling among high osiers, so thick and close that even on shore it was impossible to see a few yards.
But the line of tall poplars along the canal was visible now and then, so I made a guesswork turn, and it was not far wrong, or at any rate we got so near the canal that by winding about for a little in a pretty limpid stream, I brought the Rob Roy at last within carrying distance.