CHAPTER XIV
[Rafting Down the Neckar]
When the landlord learned that I and my agents were artists, our partyrose perceptibly in his esteem; we rose still higher when he learnedthat we were making a pedestrian tour of Europe.
He told us all about the Heidelberg road, and which were the best placesto avoid and which the best ones to tarry at; he charged me less thancost for the things I broke in the night; he put up a fine luncheonfor us and added to it a quantity of great light-green plums, thepleasantest fruit in Germany; he was so anxious to do us honor that hewould not allow us to walk out of Heilbronn, but called up Goetz vonBerlichingen's horse and cab and made us ride.
I made a sketch of the turnout. It is not a Work, it is only whatartists call a "study"--a thing to make a finished picture from. Thissketch has several blemishes in it; for instance, the wagon is nottraveling as fast as the horse is. This is wrong. Again, the persontrying to get out of the way is too small; he is out of perspective,as we say. The two upper lines are not the horse's back, they are thereigns; there seems to be a wheel missing--this would be corrected in afinished Work, of course. This thing flying out behind is not a flag,it is a curtain. That other thing up there is the sun, but I didn't getenough distance on it. I do not remember, now, what that thing is thatis in front of the man who is running, but I think it is a haystack or awoman. This study was exhibited in the Paris Salon of 1879, but did nottake any medal; they do not give medals for studies.
We discharged the carriage at the bridge. The river was full oflogs--long, slender, barkless pine logs--and we leaned on the railsof the bridge, and watched the men put them together into rafts. Theserafts were of a shape and construction to suit the crookedness andextreme narrowness of the Neckar. They were from fifty to one hundredyards long, and they gradually tapered from a nine-log breadth at theirsterns, to a three-log breadth at their bow-ends. The main part of thesteering is done at the bow, with a pole; the three-log breadth therefurnishes room for only the steersman, for these little logs are notlarger around than an average young lady's waist. The connections of theseveral sections of the raft are slack and pliant, so that the raftmay be readily bent into any sort of curve required by the shape of theriver.
The Neckar is in many places so narrow that a person can throw a dogacross 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 isas much as thirty, and sometimes forty yards wide--but is split intothree equal bodies of water, by stone dikes which throw the mainvolume, depth, and current into the central one. In low water these neatnarrow-edged dikes project four or five inches above the surface, likethe comb of a submerged roof, but in high water they are overflowed. Ahatful of rain makes high water in the Neckar, and a basketful producesan overflow.
There are dikes abreast the Schloss Hotel, and the current is violentlyswift at that point. I used to sit for hours in my glass cage, watchingthe long, narrow rafts slip along through the central channel, grazingthe right-bank dike and aiming carefully for the middle arch of thestone bridge below; I watched them in this way, and lost all this timehoping to see one of them hit the bridge-pier and wreck itself sometimeor other, but was always disappointed. One was smashed there onemorning, 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, thedaredevil spirit of adventure came suddenly upon me, and I said to mycomrades:
"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 asthey could. Harris wanted to cable his mother--thought it his duty todo that, as he was all she had in this world--so, while he attended tothis, I went down to the longest and finest raft and hailed the captainwith a hearty "Ahoy, shipmate!" which put us upon pleasant terms atonce, and we entered upon business. I said we were on a pedestrian tourto Heidelberg, and would like to take passage with him. I said thispartly through young Z, who spoke German very well, and partly throughMr. X, who spoke it peculiarly. I can _understand_ German as well as themaniac 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 nolicense to carry passengers, and therefore was afraid the law would beafter him in case the matter got noised about or any accident happened.So I _chartered_ the raft and the crew and took all the responsibilitieson myself.
With a rattling song the starboard watch bent to their work and hovethe cable short, then got the anchor home, and our bark moved off with astately 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, theperils which beset it, and the need and wisdom of being always preparedfor the worst; this shaded off into low-voiced references to the dangersof the deep, and kindred matters; but as the gray east began to reddenand the mysterious solemnity and silence of the dawn to give placeto the joy-songs of the birds, the talk took a cheerier tone, and ourspirits began to rise steadily.
Germany, in the summer, is the perfection of the beautiful, but nobodyhas understood, and realized, and enjoyed the utmost possibilities ofthis soft and peaceful beauty unless he has voyaged down the Neckar ona raft. The motion of a raft is the needful motion; it is gentle,and gliding, and smooth, and noiseless; it calms down all feverishactivities, it soothes to sleep all nervous hurry and impatience; underits restful influence all the troubles and vexations and sorrows thatharass the mind vanish away, and existence becomes a dream, a charm,a deep and tranquil ecstasy. How it contrasts with hot and perspiringpedestrianism, and dusty and deafening railroad rush, and tediousjolting 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 thetime. Sometimes the banks were overhung with thick masses of willowsthat wholly hid the ground behind; sometimes we had noble hills on onehand, clothed densely with foliage to their tops, and on the other handopen levels blazing with poppies, or clothed in the rich blue ofthe corn-flower; sometimes we drifted in the shadow of forests, andsometimes along the margin of long stretches of velvety grass, fresh andgreen and bright, a tireless charm to the eye. And the birds!--they wereeverywhere; they swept back and forth across the river constantly, andtheir jubilant music was never stilled.
It was a deep and satisfying pleasure to see the sun create the newmorning, and gradually, patiently, lovingly, clothe it on with splendorafter splendor, and glory after glory, till the miracle was complete.How different is this marvel observed from a raft, from what it is whenone observes it through the dingy windows of a railway-station in somewretched village while he munches a petrified sandwich and waits for thetrain.
[Transcriber's Note for edition 12: on the advice of two German-speakingvolunteers, the German letters a, o, and u with umlauts have beenrendered as ae, oe, and ue instead of as, variously, :a, a", :o, o" and:u, u" as in previous editions.]