Lippincotts Magazine, October 1873 | Page 9

have a meeting with a Prussian engineer
about bridges and canals and the waterworks of Vauban, and
everything that would least interest you. I must cross immediately to
Kehl. I leave you to finish the geography of Strasburg."
"I know Strasburg by heart, and am burning to get out of it. I want to
cross the Rhine, for the sake of boasting that I have set foot in the
Baden territory. By the by, how have I managed to come so far without
a passport?"
"This did it," said my engineer, tapping the tin box, which a waiter had
restored to me in a wonderful state of polish. "I put a plan or two in it,
with some tracing muslin, and allowed a spirit-level to stick out. You
were asleep. I know all the officials on this route. I had only to tap the
box and nod. You passed as my assistant. Nobody could have put you
through but I."
"You are a vile conspirator," said I affectionately, "and have all the
lower traits of the Yankee character. But I will use you to carry me to
Kehl, as Faust used Mephistopheles. By the by, your carriage is a
comfortable one and saves my time. I have two hours before I need
return to the train."
"It is double the time you will need."
EDWARD STRAHAN.
[TO BE CONTINUED.]

FROM THE POTOMAC TO THE OHIO.
[Illustration: VIEW NEAR ANTIETAM, MARYLAND.]
An old writer who dearly loved excursions, Francis Rabelais, inserted
in one of his fables an account of a country where the roads were in
motion. He called the place the Island of Odes, from the Greek [Greek:
odss], a "road," and explained: "For the roads travel, like animated

things; and some are wandering roads, like planets, others passing
roads, crossing roads, connecting roads. And I saw how the travelers,
messengers and inhabitants of the land asked, Where does this road go
to? and that? They were answered, From the south to Faverolles, to the
parish, to the city, to the river. Then hoisting themselves on the proper
road, without being otherwise troubled or fatigued, they found
themselves at their place of destination."
This fancy sketch, thrown off by an inveterate joker three hundred
years ago, is justified curiously by any of our modern railways; but to
see the picture represented in startling accuracy you should find some
busy "junction" among the coal-mountains. Here you may observe,
from your perch upon the hill, an assemblage of roads actively
reticulating and radiating, winding through the valleys, slinking off
misanthropically into a tunnel, or gayly parading away elbow-in-elbow
with the streams. These avenues, upon minute inspection, are seen to be
obviously moving: they are crawling and creeping with an unbroken
joint-work of black wagons, the rails hidden by their moving pavement,
and the road throughout advancing, foot by foot, into the distance. It is
hardly too fanciful--on seeing its covering slide away, its switches
swinging, its turn-tables revolving, its drawbridges opening--to declare
that such a road is an animal--an animal proving its nature, according to
Aristotle, by the power to move itself. Nor is it at all censurable to ask
of a road like this where it "goes to."
The notion of what Rabelais calls a "wayfaring way," a _chemin
cheminant_, came into our thoughts at Cumberland. But Cumberland
was not reached until after many miles of interesting travel along a
route remarkable for beauties, both natural and improved. A
coal-distributor is certain, in fact, to be a road full of attractions for the
tourist; for coal, that Sleeping Beauty of our era, always chooses a
pretty bed in which to perform its slumber of ages. The road which
delivers the Cumberland coal, however, is truly exceptional for
splendor of scenery, as well as for historical suggestiveness and
engineering science. It has recently become, by means of certain lavish
providences established for the blessing of travelers at every turn, a
tourist route and a holiday delight.
It is all very well for the traveler of the nineteenth century to protest
against the artificial and unromantic guidance of the railway: he will

find, after a little experience, that the homes of true romance are
discovered for him by the locomotive; that solitudes and recesses which
he would never find after years of plodding in sandal shoon are silently
opened to him by the engineer; and that Timon now, seeking the
profoundest cave in the fissures of the earth, reaches it in a Pullman car.
The silvery Capitoline dome at Washington floats up from among its
garden trees, seeming to grow higher and higher as we recede from it.
Quickly dominating the low and mean buildings which encumber and
try to hide it in its own neighborhood, it gradually rises superior to the
whole city,