But the porters, guards, and engine-drivers made a good deal of talk before the canoe was safely stowed among the trunks in the van; and I now and then visited her there, just for company's sake, and to see that the sharp-cornered, iron-bound boxes of the American tourists had not broken holes in her oaken skin. One could not but survey, with some anxiety, the lumbering casks on the platform, waiting to be rolled in beside the canoe; and the fish baskets, iron bars, crates, and clumsy gear of all sorts, which at every stoppage is tumbled in or roughly shovelled out of the luggage-van of a train. This care and sympathy for a mere boat may be called enthusiasm by those who have not felt the like towards inanimate objects linked to our pleasures or pains by hourly ties of interest; but others will understand how a friendship for the boat was felt more every day I journeyed with her: her strong points were better known as they were more tried, but the weak points, too, of the frail traveller became now more apparent, and the desire to bring her safely to England was rapidly increased when we had made the homeward turn. The mere cost of the railway ticket for the boat's carriage to Zurich was two or three shillings,--not so much as the expense of taking it between the stations and the hotels. Submitting, then, to be borne again on wheels and through tunnels in the good old railway style, we soon arrive among the regular Swiss mountains, and where gather the Swiss tourists, for whom arise the Swiss hotels, those huge establishments founded and managed so as best to fatten on the wandering Englishman, and to give him homoeopathic feeding while his purse is bled. For suffer me again to have a little gossip about _eating_. Yes, it is a mundane subject, and undoubtedly physical; but when the traveller has to move his body and baggage along a route by his own muscles, by climbing or by rowing, or by whipping a mule, it is a matter of high moment, to him at least, that fibrine should be easily procurable. If you wish, then, to live well in Switzerland and Germany go to German hotels, and avoid the grand barracks reared on every view-point for the English tourist. See how the omnibus, from the train or the steamer, pours down its victims into the landlords' arms. Papa and Mamma, and three daughters and a maid: well, of course _they_ will be attended to. Here is another timid lady with an alpenstock, a long white cane people get when they arrive in Switzerland, and which they never know what on earth to do with. Next there will issue from the same vehicle a dozen newly-fledged Londoners; and the whole party, men and women, are so demure, so afraid of themselves, that the hotel-keeper does just what he likes with them, every one.