EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ROADS
in regions farther west, but a tourist seeking an impassable highway could safely count on finding one. In going, as late as 1798, from Lobositz to Aussig, writes Mariana Starke, "the lightest vehicle can scarcely escape over-turning, unless held up by men. … Two persons who went in carriages at the same time with us broke blood-vessels, while others were over-turned, and nearly killed with fatigue."[1]
After this recital, which could be indefinitely extended, of the difficulties attending travel on German roads, we may with little hesitation agree with a tourist in Germany at the end of the eighteenth century that "the manner of travelling … is more inconvenient than in any other part of Europe equally civilized. Intercommunication is therefore greatly impeded and in the winter months totally interrupted."[2]
V
The Low Countries
In the Low Countries, particularly in Flanders, the roads appear to have been very good except in some of the less frequented parts.[3] The slight elevation of the land offered small obstacles to the building of thoroughfares that went with undeviating directness from one town to another. In multitudes of instances the road ran beside the canal and served both as a towpath and a highway for general traffic. Very commonly, as we may see in the pictures of Hobbema, the roads were planted with two rows of trees and maintained in excellent condition. James Essex, who toured in France and the Low Countries in 1773, went from Antwerp by way of Mechlin to Brussels and notes in his "Journal": "The Roads are worth the notice of a Traveler, being made through the most delightfull inclosed Country that can be immagined, it is paved in the middle, as well as the best streets in London, and kept in better repair."[4]
51
- ↑ Letters from Italy, ii, 230, 231.
- ↑ Cogan, The Rhine, ii, 259.
- ↑ In 1750, Voltaire notes that "one is mired in summer in august Germany." He adds: "Of all modern nations, France and the little country of the Belgians are the only ones that have roads worthy of antiquity." Cited by Babeau, Les Voyageurs en France, p. 262.
- ↑ Essex, Journal of a Tour, etc., p. 55.
