Rhineland (Germany) -- Description and travel -- Juvenile literature
Now, the small villages that I was speaking of are formed almost
exclusively of the dwellings of the various classes which I have
described, while the hotels or inns that are built on the margins of
them are intended, not as they would be in America, for the
accommodation of the people of the same class, but for travellers of
wealth, and rank, and distinction, who come from all quarters of the
world to explore the beauties and study the antiquities of the Rhine.
Thus the inns, however small and secluded they may be, and however
retired and solitary the places in which they stand, are always very
nice, and even elegant, in their interior arrangements. The chambers are
furnished and arranged in the prettiest possible manner. Handsome open
carriages and pretty boats are ready to convey visitors on any excursion
which they may desire to make in the neighborhood, and the table is
provided with almost as many delicacies and niceties as you can have in
Paris.
The roads along the banks of the Rhine, too, are absolutely perfect.
Well they may be so in fact, for workmen have been constantly employed
in making and perfecting them for nearly two thousand years. Julius
Caesar worked upon them. Charlemagne worked upon them. Frederic the
Great worked upon them. Napoleon worked upon them. They are walled up
wherever necessary on the side towards the river; the rock is cut away
on the side towards the land; valleys have been filled up; hill sides
have been terraced, and ravines bridged over; until the road, though
passing along the margin of a very mountainous region, is almost as
level as a railway throughout the whole of its course. And as it is
macadamized throughout, and is kept in the most perfect condition, it is
always, in wet weather as well as dry, as firm, and hard, and smooth as
a floor.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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