The rain continued incessantly until we reached the long straggling
village of Frick, a quaint and antique-looking place, where our
voiturier stopped for an hour to bait his horses, who, however, at
Rheinfelden had enjoyed a treat in the shape of a loaf of very brown
bread, a kind of food second only, in the estimation of foreign steeds,
to the precious _morceaux_ of lump sugar with which Swiss voituriers are
so fond of encouraging and petting them.
We were nothing loth to stretch our legs; and finding that the church
was worthless--one of those unhappy bulbous-spired and bulbous-roofed
erections so common in some parts of the Continent, and the roof of even
the eastern apse of which was twisted into a most ingenious and ugly
compound curve--we took up our quarters in the respectable hostelry and
“Bierbrauerei” of the Angel, and devoted ourselves to the consumption of
coffee and beer of no bad quality. Our host wished sadly to see us
located under his roof for the night, but we were resolute in our
determination to reach Baden that night, and so persisted in going,
though to our subsequent regret.
It was soon dark, and the new moon, which shone cheerfully upon us, gave
us just a glimpse occasionally of the scenery, which about Brugg, where
we crossed the Aar, and again at Königsfelden, seemed to be remarkably
good.
At last, at about half-past ten o’clock, we reached what we fondly hoped
was to be our resting-place. But Baden chose not to take us in, and to
our horror, as we drove up to the chief and only available inn, we were
met with the dismal announcement from the mouth of the civil landlord,
that all the rooms were full.
However, we dismounted, and found that there was no other inn in Baden
proper, but that at the Baths there were several; at them our landlord
assured us that he knew we should find no room, and so we thought it
useless to return and try. Our only course seemed to be to feed our
horses again and then go on to Zurich; and as Swiss drivers and Swiss
horses never seem to tire of trotting on slowly and drowsily along the
road, there was no difficulty in at once coming to an arrangement with
our coachman.
Accordingly, at midnight we started again, hoping at some early hour in
the morning to reach Zurich. It was sufficiently provoking to be toiling
on slowly and sleepily for nearly four hours almost alongside of a
railroad which would have taken us early the next morning in
three-quarters of an hour; but there was no help for it, and so we did
the best we could, by sleeping whenever we were able, to pass the weary
hours away.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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