EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY WATER TRAVEL
shattered and sunk by striking the piers while attempting to shoot the arches. To avoid the risk, passengers often went ashore at this point. Says Smollett, "The boats that go up the river are drawn against the stream by oxen, which swim through one of the arches of this bridge, the driver sitting between the horns of the foremost beast."[1]
The Rhone boats were very comfortable, having decks high enough to walk under. Some were drawn by horses and some floated with the current. From Lyons to Avignon the diligence par eau, drifting with the current, required three days to cover forty-eight leagues and cost eight livres.[2]
III
Italy
The barrier of the Alps constrained many tourists to enter Italy by sea. Smollett followed this plan, and in his forcible way he gives his reasons: "Rome is betwixt four and five hundred miles distant from Nice, and one half of the way I was resolved to travel by water. Indeed there is no other way of going from thence to Genoa, unless you take a mule, and clamber along the mountains at the rate of two miles an hour, and at the risque of breaking your neck every minute."[3]
The felucca used in going from Nice to Genoa was an "open boat, rowed by ten or twelve stout mariners," and "large enough to take in a post-chaise." Over the stem sheets where the passengers sat was a tilt to protect them from the rain. The boat crept along the windings of the shore and stretched out the distance from ninety to one hundred and twenty miles. For the passage one paid about a louis d'or.[4] His journey to Genoa safely accomplished, Smollett got letters of credit there for Florence and Rome and hired the same boat to go as far as Lerici.[5]
Some years earlier than Smollett, the traveler Northall made the same trip in the reverse direction. At Lerici, says he, "We went on board a felucca with ten oars, and
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