A Residence in France: With an Excursion Up the Rhine, and a Second Visit to SwitzerlandCooper, James Fenimore
History
A Residence in France: With an Excursion Up the Rhine, and a Second Visit to Switzerland
Cooper, James Fenimore
France -- Description and travel; Germany -- Description and travel; Switzerland -- Description and travel
A league or two beyond Dôle, we met two carriages coming the other way,
and exchanged horses; and really I had some such generous feelings on
the occasion, as those of a rich man who hears that a poor friend has
found a bank note. The carriage with which we exchanged was English, and
it had an earl's coronet. The pair within were man and wife; and some
fine children, with an attendant or two, were in the one that followed.
They were Scotch at a glance: the master himself wearing, besides the
stamp of his nation on his face, a bonnet with the colours of his clan.
There is something highly respectable in this Scotch nationality, and I
have no doubt it has greatly contributed towards making the people what
they are. If the Irish were as true to themselves, English injustice
would cease in a twelvemonth. But, as a whole, the Irish nobles are a
band of mercenaries, of English origin, and they prefer looking to the
flesh-pots of Egypt, to falling back sternly on their rights, and
sustaining themselves by the proud recollections of their forefathers.
Indeed half of them would find their forefathers among the English
speculators, when they found them at all. I envied the Scotchman his cap
and tartan, though I dare say both he and his pretty wife had all the
fine feelings that such an emblem is apt to inspire. Your earldoms are
getting to be paltry things; but it is really something to be the chief
of a clan!
You have travelled the road between Dôle and Dijon with me once,
already, and I shall say no more than that we slept at the latter town.
The next morning, with a view to vary the route, and to get off the
train of carriages, we took the road towards Troyes. Our two objects
were effected, for we saw no more of our competitors for post-horses,
and we found ourselves in an entirely new country; but, parts of
Champagne and the Ardennes excepted, a country that proved to be the
most dreary portion of France we had yet been in. While trotting along a
good road, through this naked, stony region, we came to a little valley
in which there was a village that was almost as wild in appearance, as
one of those on the Great St. Bernard. A rivulet flowed through the
village, and meandered by our side, among the half sterile meadows. It
was positively the only agreeable object that we had seen for some
hours. Recollecting the stream at Tuttlingen, A---- desired me to ask
the postilion, if it had a name. "_Monsieur, cette petite rivière
s'appelle la Seine._" We were, then, at the sources of the Seine!
Looking back I perceived, by the formation of the land, that it must
take its rise a short distance beyond the village, among some naked and
dreary-looking hills. A little beyond these, again, the streams flow
towards the tributaries of the Rhone, and we were consequently in the
high region where the waters of the Atlantic and the Mediterranean
divide. Still there were no other signs of our being at such an
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