In these Darwinian days we cannot deem primeval the man possessed of the Promethean art of fire, and so his presence on the scene adds zest to the pursuit of the Niagara problem. Whatever the antiquity of the great cataract may be found to be, the antiquity of man is greater.
THE MEUSE
ESTHER SINGLETON
The Meuse, or Maas, has the distinction of belonging to three countries,--France, Belgium and Holland. In its long journey of 580 miles to the sea, it passes through varied and beautiful scenery, including the Forest of Ardennes, so famous in the Charlemagne romances and in the turbulent period of the Middle Ages; then through the vine-lands and hop-gardens so often laid waste by battles in Belgium; and finally through the flat lands of Holland where it has afforded inspiration to many painters.
[Illustration: THE MEUSE]
Rising in France in the south of the Department Haute Marne near the Monts Faucilles, it crosses the Department Vosges, where, between Bazeilles and Noncourt, it disappears and has a subterranean course for three miles and a half. After crossing the Meuse and Ardennes Departments, passing by the towns of Neufchâteau, Vaucouleurs, Commercy St. Mihiel and Verdun, it reaches Sedan and enters Belgium. During the rest of its course, its name is variously Meuse, Maes, Maas and Merwede. Above Dinant it receives the Lesse and at Namur, its largest tributary, the Sambre, which almost doubles its volume. Going north-east, it flows through a narrow valley, enclosed between wooded hills and cliffs, dotted with picturesque villas and country houses, and at Liège it is joined by the Ourthe. The river now enters Dutch territory, and is henceforth called the Maas. Passing Maestricht, or Maastricht, it flows by Roermond, where it receives the Roer, and at Venlo a canal begins which connects it with the Scheldt. At Gorinchem, it receives the Waal, an arm of the Rhine. Now the Maas soon divides: the Merwede flowing west, while the southern arm falls into the Biesbosch, an estuary of the sea. On reaching Dortrecht, river and sea navigation begin. Here the Maas again divides. The Old Maas flows directly west while the northern arm joins the Lek, a second branch of the Rhine, and continues its course to Rotterdam, where the Rotte joins it. The two arms unite here and flow into the North Sea by the Hook of Holland. Schiedam and Vlardingen are the last places of importance upon its banks. Including all windings, the Meuse is 580 miles long and is navigable for about 460 miles. In the early part of its course the Meuse traverses a wide valley covered by green meadows and then flows through narrow gorges, hemmed in by high hills and cliffs. At Dinant, picturesquely situated on the right bank, at the base of limestone cliffs crowned by a fortress, it is said that Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, and his son, Charles the Bold, having captured the town, caused 800 people to be drowned in the Meuse. The river, however, quite unconscious of this tragedy, flows on beneath a pinnacle of rock called the _Roche à Bayard_, because the famous steed, Bayard, belonging to the Quatre Fils d’Aymon, left a hoof-print here as it sprang over the valley when pursued by Charlemagne. Rocks of fantastic shapes now rise above the river, which is spanned by bridges. Innumerable villas and ancestral castles peep through the thick foliage and command the cliffs. The French border is reached at Givet; and at Sedan, memorable for the battle between the French and Germans (September 1, 1870), Belgian territory is entered. The hills and valleys in the vicinity of Sedan were occupied by the Army of the Meuse.
At Namur, also grouped on the cliffs, the Meuse is crossed by several stone bridges. The citadel on a hill between the Sambre and Meuse is believed to occupy the site of the camp of the Aduatuci described by Cæsar. The Meuse, flowing through the town of Liège, forms an island which is connected with each bank by six bridges. The principal town lies on the left bank: Outremeuse is a factory town on the right bank. A fine view is afforded from the citadel (520 feet above the sea level), erected by Prince Bishop Maximilian Henry of Bavaria in 1650, on the site of earlier fortifications. The valleys of the Meuse, Ourthe and Vesdre are here bounded on the south by the Ardennes, while the Petersburg with Maestricht and the broad plains of Limburg are seen on the north. On the opposite bank of the Meuse is the Chartreuse. The river here is 460 feet wide and is crossed by several bridges, of which the Pont des Arches, rebuilt in 1860-3, dates from the Eighth Century, and is famous in local history.
After the train passes under the Chartreuse, the town of Jupille is reached, a favourite residence of Pepin of Héristal, who died here in 714. The town was often visited by Charlemagne.
The Dutch custom-house is at Eysden, where a beautiful old _château_ is seen among its trees; and on the opposite bank of the Meuse, the Petersburg rises 330 feet above the river, with the _château_ of Castert on its summit. We are now in the Dutch province of Limburg, with its capital, Maestricht, on the left bank of the Maas, the _Trajectum Superius_ of the Romans (_Trajectum ad Mosam_), the seat of a bishopric; the residence of Frankish Kings; and, later, the joint possession of Prince Bishops of Liège and the Dukes of Brabant.
At Gorinchem the river is joined by the Waal and as both streams are broad, an impressive sheet of water is the result. For a time, the river is known as the Merwede. About four miles below Gorinchem, the Biesbosch (reed forest) begins, a district of forty square miles and consisting of 100 islands formed by a destructive inundation in 1421, when seventy-two towns and villages and more than 100,000 persons perished.
This inundation also separated the next town of importance, Dordrecht, or Dort, as the Dutch call it, from the mainland. This town, one of the wealthiest towns of the Netherlands in the Middle Ages, presents a most picturesque appearance with its quaint gables, red-tiled roofs, and the lofty square tower of the Groote Kerk, which has kept watch over the Maas for six hundred years. How familiar it looks in the silvery light of early morning or when flooded with the warm golden glow of the afternoon to those who are well acquainted with the pictures of Cuyp and Jan van Goyen! Could we wander through the town, we should find much to study. There are numerous old mediæval houses in the Wynstraat; the ancient gate, Groothoofd-Poort, that had to be rebuilt in 1618; and the finest specimens of carving in Holland,--the choir-stalls of 1538-40 in the Groote Kerk. The harbour is full of boats and timber rafts that have drifted down the Rhine from the Black Forest and the _tjalks_, _praams_ and other Dutch boats, large and small, with their lee-boards (called _zwaards_) used to steady the keelless boats, and bright sails become more numerous.
The Maas now flows through typical Dutch landscapes and feeds many canals that lead to Delft and other cities.
At length we reach Rotterdam which lies on both sides of the river; the older city lies on the right bank of the Maas near its confluence with the Rotte. The many docks and canals--Koningshaven, Nieuwehaven, Haringvliet, Oudehaven, Wijnhaven, Scheepmakershaven, Leuvehaven, Zalmhaven, Westerhaven, etc., are filled with ocean-going vessels and river craft of all sizes and kinds, as well as nationalities, presenting forests of masts and innumerable funnels. The streets are animated with sailors and merchants, while the tree-bordered embankment, called the Bompjes, affords a gay promenade.
On the way to the sea, Schiedam on the Schie, is passed, and also the more interesting town of Vlaardingen, one of the oldest towns in Holland, as is evidenced by the market-place. It is the _dépôt_ for the “great fishery,” and from it a fleet of 125 boats and 1,500 men are sent forth annually. Maasluis, the next town, which takes a share in the “great fishery,” is passed, and then the open sea greets the Maas at the Hook of Holland.
THE RHONE
ANGUS B. REACH
Few travellers have much fancy for the most rapid of the great European streams. If they at all make its personal acquaintance, it is with knapsack on back, and iron-shod _bâton_ in hand--when they stand upon the mother-glacier, and watch the river-child glide brightly into air--or perhaps it is near fair Geneva, that, loitering on a wooden bridge, they mark the second start in life of the strong river, and, if they be philosophers, lament the clamorous and not cleanly Arve. Later in the river’s career--the pellucid waters of the snow are again and still more fatally fouled by the slow-running Saone which comes down by Lyons, heavy and fat with the rich mud of Burgundy. At the point of junction there, also, the tourist sometimes goes to observe the coalition of the streams, and to find out, that instead of the bigger river cleansing the smaller, the smaller utterly besmirches and begrimes the greater. So pondering over the moral, he too often takes little further heed of the Rhone; or if he does, it is as a mere beast of burden. He is bound south, and he knows that the “swift and arrowy Rhone” will add wings to the speed of steam; that stepping on board the long, long steamboat from the noble quays of Lyons at summer’s dawn, he will step ashore amid the clamour of the uproarious Avignon porters by the summer’s eve. But the day’s flight--through rocks, and vines, and corn-lands, and by ancient towns and villages, and through old bridges of stone, and modern bridges of boats, is to the conventional traveller usually nearly a blank. How different from the Rhine; no legends in the handbook, no castles, no picturesque students, no jolly Burschen choruses over pipes and beer. The steamer flies southwards. If she be one of the quickest of the Rhone fleet, and the river be in good order, she could carry you between sunrise and sunset, from the land where the chestnut and the walnut most abound, through the zone where the mulberry is almost exclusively the tree; next past the region where men are clipping, and twisting, and trimming the olive, at once sacred and classic, and, finally, fairly into the flats, where tropical rice grows out of fever-haunted swamps in the African-like jungles of the Camargue. During this flight, it is to be noted, that you have descended upwards of 600 feet, in fact, that you have been steaming down a modified water-fall, and have measured in a day, a run from a climate which may be described as temperate, to one which is, to all intents and purposes, torrid.