Cycle Tours in Europe
In Northern Latitudes

Cycle Tours in Europe.

In Northern Latitudes.

(By F. Rieck, Coff’s Harbour.)

Basel (Switzerland), 20/12/05.

Winter and night in these far northern regions are no man’s friends. Although we arrived on our wheels a good distance south of the North Sea, we had at this season to look out for winter quarters, which we found on the banks of the Upper Rhine River, a stream which runs here somewhat in a westerly direction. The city of Basel is well protected against the severe north and east winds by the densely wooded mountains of the Black Forest, whose ranges stretch along the right shore of the Rhine opposite. In consequence of this protection the climate is wonderfully mild in comparison with that of many other parts of Europe. A snowstorm was raging not long ago all along the coasts of the Baltic, the North Sea, and down along the west coast of France to the seaport and Spaa of Biarritz, on the Atlantic Ocean, while here, although the temperature was fresh, the air was so calm, dry, and almost without frost, consequently we were able to make many pleasant cycle trips to the Upper Rhine valleys: towards Sackingen and Waldshut, Lorrach and Schonau, and also into that fertile valley along a sunny spur of the Black Forest, where the celebrated Markgrafer wine grows. Here at this season it is quite out of question to undertake long-distance cycle trips, as the daylight lasts only from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. On the way to the warmer temperatures south are the Alps, whose tops glitter in the sunshine high above the clouds, and the streets are filled with snow. We are now in the middle of December, and it was towards the end of August when we, on our cycle journey, as described in our last letter, arrived at Paris from the German boundary: the beautiful Alsatian Mountains. We found these densely wooded ranges studded with numerous ruins of a grand long-forgotten time, so romantic and interesting that we—somewhat tired after our long journey of over 500 miles in exceptionally hot weather—decided to take a long rest in the principal town in this mountain region of Zabern (Saverne), where we found suitable furnished rooms and a very satisfactory restaurant close by. The month of September (autumn here) is just the right time to live in this charming Rhine valley between the Vogeses and Black Forest Mountains, which is so suitable for orchards and vineyards. The whole of Alsace-Lorraine is full of fruit trees and vines. We found not only apples, pears, cherries, and plums, but many fine peaches, apricots, and even splendid figs. There are also enormous walnut trees, laden with ripe nuts, and immense quantities of tomatoes are cultivated. The grapes here are plentifully cultivated on the flat fields, but are not so sweet as those we tasted near Paris; therefore the wine is much inferior. The summer was so very hot that a splendid wine harvest was expected, but during the latter end of September very wet weather set in, and three-parts of the grapes were spoilt on the vines. One wine grower told us that last year he made 24 casks of wine, but this year only four. There is also a great failure of the potato crop, owing to the very dry and hot summer season. Abundance of pears, apples, quinces, plums, etc., are brought into the towns by open waggon loads. The hop season has been good, but prices for this article are now very low and scarcely pay the labour. Sugar beets are grown here in large quantities, and since the Government export bonus has been done away with sugar has now become very cheap, 2d per lb. However, it still pays the farmers and manufacturers well enough.

In the valley of Alsace-Lorraine the cultivation fields are a grand sight. The hills on these sunny sides of the Vogeses Ranges sloping gently towards the wide alluvial flats of the Rhine, are covered by far-stretching vinyards, and on suitable places the lovely trellises of hops raise themselves high above all other vegetation. The fields sometimes show all colors of the rainbow with their alternate rows of various verdure, including wheat, rye, oats, maize, buckwheat, rape, tobacco, potatoes, mangelwurzel, sugar beets, etc. A bulbous plant is cultivated here which, under stems like dahlias or sunflowers, bears enormous tubers, which are fed into pigs and cattle. This plant is called Erd-Apfel—the botanical name is Topinambur. Cabbages are grown here of enormous size, and, together with enormous quantities of onions and cauliflowers, etc., are carried by barges on the Rhein-Marne-Seine Canal westwards into France and eastwards into Germany.

Our place of sojourn was Zabern, through which this canal traffic passes by a wonderful system of sluice gates. By this means the canal is raised, and made to travel over the mountain passes of the Vogeses. Zabern is a highly romantic and interesting old place, which boasts of great antiquity. It is situated in the valley of the river Zorn, on the very edge of the towering, densely wooded heights of the Vogeses, on top of which runs the boundary line of France and Germany from north and south. On the whole length of this immense canal, which near Strassburg is connected with the Rhine-Rhone-canal, there is a very lively traffic, shipping facility being offered from Rotterdam via Cologne, Strassburg, Paris to Marseilles. The canal was finished during the reign of Emperor Napoleon III., in the year 1854. In Zabern we saw barges flying German, French, Hollander, and Belgian flags. Hitherto these large barges were drawn by horses, and sometimes by men. As the lands rise the barges must be raised or let down through sluice-gates, which takes about five to ten minutes. As horses go so very slowly, arrangements are being made to substitute steam or other mechanical motor power. The first steam motor barge passed through Zabern from Antwerp to Paris during the month of September, 1905.

Parallel to this canal runs the railway from Metz to Paris, and also the river Zorn, and alongside this a very fine broad, smooth main road. It may be interesting to our readers and Australian countrymen to report that this Rhine-Marne canal, from the long tunnel (through which it runs) near Alzweiler to Strassburg, 62 kilometres, with its 51 sluice gates, cost only £350,000, while the railway parallel to it cost £650,000.

Almost every mountain top near Zabern, and farther in the mountains along the ancient highways, commanding a view of the traffic from Strassburg to Paris, has a ruined castle on its summit, where the ancient landlords and knights hid their treasure, and from where they waged war against just and unjust alike. Hohbar Castle is one of the edifices of the glorious times of Barbarossa, which, together with many towns and flourishing villages, were destroyed by the Armagnacs in the years following the battle of St. Jacob, near Basel, in 1444. Amongst the walls of these majestic structures, high upon cliffs of ragged rock, stands a modern elegant restaurant and summer pension for visitors, who are allowed to ramble about in these interesting old ruins, gardens and parks, overgrown by giant oaks and immense knotty vines of ivy and brambles. We often visited this shady place on hot summer days. There are steep, narrow mountain-paths to climb, and suddenly we were frequently surprised, finding moss-covered stairs and other reminders of works of human art. There are surprising antiquities in this part, including the Greiffenstein Castle ruins, Geroldseck, and the ruined fortification of Lutzelstein high above the village of Lutzelburg.

Strassburg Revisited.

As the month of October set in with sharp east winds, which, on the towards east, exposed hill slopes, we felt somewhat severely, we sent our big luggage to Strassburg, and followed on our wheels to this flourishing city, where we secured furnished quarters for a period of six weeks. On entering the old city we were astonished to find how greatly it had grown and improved since we visited it four years previously. Quite a new quarter of palaces, Government offices, universities, museums, libraries and gorgeous rows of modern, broad, splendidly paved streets of private buildings had grown up in place of narrow, back-slums, and in the principal main streets and places new shops have been built, equal in splendour to many of the best in Berlin, Vienna, Hamburg, Bremen, and many other European cities, Paris, even London, not excepted.

The many arms of the River Ill, running through Strassburg, four years ago consisting of stagnating ancient fortification moats, wherein carcasses of dead dogs, etc., could be seen floating for weeks in the green slush, have been turned into clear, swift torrents, spanned by noble bridges; and electric trams run in all directions through the whole city and far into the suburbs for 1d each trip. The town of Kehl, on the right (Badish) shore of the Rhine, has not advanced so much perhaps because the land between Strassburg and the River Rhine, a distance of about three kilometres, is rather swampy and low. The parks and gardens in the north of Strassburg, called orangeries, are as beautiful as superior art gardening, a profusion of exquisite forest trees, shrubberies, flowers, etc., can make a landscape, which by nature is furnished with a mild, sunny climate and first class soil; but the rows of orange trees, kept in large tubs, seem sadly to object to be destined to add to the floral and sylvan charms which these latitudes without tropical plants amply afford. Here also we see that men like to possess, or at least to admire, what nature declines to grant him. These poor old orange and lemon trees, which grow wild in the bush close to our home on the North Coast of New South Wales, are almost worshipped by old and young in Strassburg.

We paid a visit to the museum, which is kept in one of the ancient princely castles in this city close to the Strassburg Munster Cathedral. On the ground floor an big royal halls with venerable rococo stucco ceilings; the walls hung with costly, silk embroidered, very old goblins. The exhibits include many interesting historical relics. The picture gallery, kept in the upper storey of this venerable and somewhat neglected palace we were unable to see, because during the month of July a dreadful hailstorm smashed all the thick glass-roofing of the building. Luckily the costly pictures were never injured.

At the beginning of October in the surrounding villages of Strassburg the grapes are harvested and pressed out to make wine. While the wine is new it is consumed in great quantities by the people. The town population of this big city stream out in hundreds and thousands by trains, electric trams, on cycles, motors, in traps, on horseback, and on foot to the farming villages. There, in every inn, there is great rejoicing, music and dancing. We saw grand-parents, parents, and children in hearty and very decent enjoyment, but never anything rude or vicious. Lots of home-made suasages, bread, ham, cheese, etc., etc., are consumed with the young wine, and a very jolly and harmless Sunday afternoon is spent in the fresh country air on the banks of the Upper Rhine. There are at the present time 20,000 soldiers from different parts of the German Empire garrisoned in the fortified town of Strassburg and surrounding detached forts, and it was very interesting to view the drilling of recruits, who were learning to ride on saddles without stirrups and both hands outstretched or behind them. They must also learn to vault on to their horses from both near and off sides. The calisthenic exercises also are very amusing, also the jumping of the young soldiers of bush fences, climbing high spiked iron fortification railings, sides of houses, high stone walls, slippery poles and ladders. The soldiers are simply but very well fed, very strictly but kindly treated, and always look healthy, hardy, earnest, and happy, and nearly always in later life they look back on the one or two years of military life with pride and pleasure.

Switzerland.

We spent a very agreeable time in Strassburg, and travelled next to Basel, in Switzerland. Basel is one of the most important cities of the Helvetian Republic, and is full of most interesting and remarkably antique buildings. The people are busily occupied in laying out new, broad streets, and filling the same with gigantic private and public buildings, schools, churches, museums, libraries, railway stations, palaces, theatres and other public recreation halls, factories, botanical and zoological gardens, etc. The swiftly flowing river is used to drive the works of the factories, electric dynamos, etc., saving coal, and keeping this pure, mild air free from coal-smoke. There are a great number of silk manufactories, besides many other industries, which prosper well and pay their workers, amongst whom are highly intelligent artists, very satisfactory wages. These wage-earners are almost all local, or at least Swiss, people, and abhor the introduction of cheap labour from Poland, Bohemia, Slavonia, etc., which is so largely done in the manufactories of the German Empire.

We found our good friends, where we formerly lodged, still in the same house, and took our lodgings with them again. To show how people on the European continent are able to do business in every country and in all languages, it may be pointed out that our landlord, who is a horse-dealer, speaks and writes nine languages. Born in Genoa (Italy) and married to a Hollander lady, he attends horse markets in Holland, France, Denmark, England, Spain, Germany, Russia, Italy, Austria. His wife and daughters, who assist him here in correspondence by letters and telephone, are, besides in the local Switzer patios, firm in excellent German, French, Italian, English, and Hollandish.

There was a time, about 450 years ago, when the three nations in Switzerland—Germans, French and Italians—were not so well united as Switzerland is at present, when neighbouring powers and large landowners, hungry for still more land, thought it the right time to subjugate these free, masterless mountaineers, and take their land. In 1444, when King Charles VII. sat on the French throne, a swarm of impoverished knights at the heads of bondless desperadoes and murderous miscreants, living on the Royal French court, threatened to wrench the government out of the hands of the monarch and become a scourge of the land and the working people. This King was agreeably surprised to receive an offer from the Austrian Emperor for the loan of 5000 of these “bravos,” called Armagnacs, after their leader, the Lord of Armagnac. The French King, glad to get rid of this band of cheeky cut-throats, sent 50,000 Armagnacs instead of 5000, which, like swarms of vermin, marched into Switzerland. The people of Basel, without knowing the number of undisciplined French desperadoes opposed to them, could only put forward a few thousand stalwart, well trained Swiss. They met on the open field, and in a murderous battle 8000 Armagnacs were slain; but of the brave Swiss, not one escaped alive. A grand marble group now celebrates the memory of the day of St. Jacob. This monument consists of a group of dying warriors, blessed by the Angel of Liberty. The French freeshooters, instead of trying to conquer Switzerland for the crown of Austria, afterwards decided not to risk their lives in marching in the snowy Swiss mountains. The leaders concluded an alliance with the Swiss, and, like hungry wolves, these Armagnacs swarmed down northwards into the peaceful unprotected Rhine valley, where, up to the present time, the ruined castles and towns bear witness of a horrible past and teaches that the right of possession lays the burden and duty of protection on our shoulders.