The contrast, of course, between horse and boat was much greater than between waggon and boat. In fact, the choice between the latter pair was many times a matter of comfort rather than of cost; the fares for both, in all normal cases but one where they can be exactly determined, varying from three farthings to a penny ha'penny a mile. To compare this with existing railway fares we may strike an average and say sixpence a mile; but the charges will be found to approach the minimum more often on the river than in the waggon. A typical instance is the five stivers [2s. 6d.] on the nine-mile canal between Haarlem and Amsterdam, and the lowest, the exception just spoken of, is the sixteen soldi [3s. 6d.] for the twenty-four miles by river and lagoon between Venice and Padua, recorded by Villamont in 1591, and by Van Buchell in 1587. One disadvantage common to both cart and boat must not be forgotten—that, to profit by this relative cheapness, the traveller had to form one of a party; if no party was ready he had to wait till one collected. Sir Henry Wotton, to take one example out of many, once wanted to go by waggon from Brunswick to Frankfort, about one hundred and fifty miles; had he started on the spot he would have started alone and paid at the rate of 4s. 6d. a mile of our money. He waited a week before two disreputable specimens turned up to share the expense. This freedom to choose one's company was a decided advantage for the traveller who rode, considering that murdering was far less exclusively a lower-class habit than it has since become. But he had to pay dearly for the increased respectability and pace. Horse-hire varied from a penny ha'penny to fivepence a mile, the maximum charge representing the cost of post-horses in France in the seventeenth century, the minimum the charge in Italy for a horse that was waiting for a return fare, an opportunity that might frequently be met with. The average was far nearer the maximum than the minimum rate, since it was often a case of post-horse or no horse, and post rates did not sink so very far below the French standard. According to Moryson, the English charged two shillings a day in London, one shilling a day in the provinces, for other than post-horses, but he was a native and the charges to foreigners probably exceeded the charges to natives throughout Europe in a greater degree then than now; an Englishman on the way from Calais to Paris complains that he had to pay £2 15s. where a Frenchman paid but three pistoles at sixteen shillings and eightpence each;[130] and that is not an isolated grievance. In fact, as a comment on Moryson's remark about England, when Lionello, a secretary of the Venetian ambassador, went post to Edinburgh and back in June, 1617, besides paying threepence a mile for each horse, he includes in his accounts as usual tips fourpence to the woman and sixpence to the horse-boy, at each stage.[131] In Italy, where several foreigners found the cost