Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 1.djvu/148

 142

NOTES AND QUERIES. MSKL-FKB .-19,191*

by canal in the direction of Fumes and Dunkirk. They certainly ran considerable risk. Some Dutchmen, passing that way two days later, were robbed and stripped ; and, notwithstanding the drummer, it was only her ladyship's undaunted courage which presented a like fate befalling her party. She seems to have been a forceful lady, and spoke sharply to the rogues, and scorned their threats to shoot her and her com- panions, so that in the end they abated their demands, and, instead of receiving six pounds, they departed content with " something to drinke."

From Dunkirk the travellers took ship to Calais, but were becalmed, and had to board a Holland boat, and spend the night there in the company of a boorish captain. The next morning one of the party waded ashore, and fetched a cart, in which they all entered Gravelines in a very triumphant manner. On the road from Gravelines to Calais the travellers encountered twelve soldiers bound thither, and, having accepted their offer of an escort, found themselves obliged to pay twice as much as was strictly due, the ordinary rate being 12 pence per man. On parting with them Lassels sagely remarks that, having discharged one escort, the party was in no danger of further brigandage until they met another.

From Calais they proceeded by coach to Paris, where they found twice as many people as there was room for.* Six days later, her ladyship having visited the Louvre, the Luxembourg, the Bastille, the Bourse, and other buildings and churches, they set out by coach for Lyons. At Essonnes a visit was paid to the house of M. Essolin, whose wonderful water-works both surprised and delighted them. From a brook close by the water was conveyed into the house by means of pipes and cocks, and carried into the buttery, the kitchen, the chambers, the bathing rooms, and the gardens, where it scattered itself into twenty " knotts or bedds."f At Fontainebleau, in the ponds and moat, was a store of huge

probably it was in the Faubourg St. Germain, where most strangers lodged in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. At a later date (1697-8) there were between fifteen and sixteen thousand strangers in this Faubom-g, and thirty-six thousand at the commencement of 1699. J. P. Marana, ' Lettre d'un Sicilien a un de ses amis,' Paris, 1883, p. 15.
 * Lassels does not say where they stayed

t Described at length in the ' Voyage of Italy,' 1670, vol. i. p. 25.

carps, some said to be over 100 years old.* Eleven days later they reached Lyons, f Here her ladyship saw little but a " great towne full of busy people and traffick." j

From Lyons they followed the post road over Mont Cenis to Turin. At Lansle- bourg, a town which drove a great trade in- providing chairs for people crossing the- mountain, her ladyship and her husbsnd obtained chairs, and were carried over by; Morans,

" that is men who have no other trade but to carry men in a chaire made for the purpose up- and downe that hill, fower to every chaire, two rest and guide the chaire while the other two beare the burthen, they have irons in the midst of their shoe soles which hinder them from slipping,, and they are soe used to that trayde that they will carry you safe where anybody else would be afraid to goe." ||

The rest rode on mules to the top, and then dismounted and descended on foot.

At Turin they found the Duke's great Palace not quite finished. Lassels omits to mention in this narrative, but describes in his ' Voyage of Italy ' (i. 76), the curious invention by which the Duchess conveyed herself to her bathing - place, which seems to have been a kind of primitive lift worked by a pulley and swing. From. another traveller^ we learn that the lift was in the

July 13, 1665 (Sir Thomas Browne's ' Works,' 1836, i. 109) : " In the fish ponds I saw some of the greatest carpes that ever I beheld and which followed us when wee whistled." See also ' Voyage of Italy,' 1670, pp. 30-31.
 * Compare letter of Ed. Browne to his father,

t The diligence from Paris to Lyons made the journey in five days in 1691 (Furetiere, ' Dic- tionnaire,' 1691), but in the meantime there had been a considerable " speeding up " of traffic by the introduction under Louis XIV. of caches volants. Babeau, ' Les Voyageurs en France/ Paris, 1885, p. 11.

J "It stands upon the rivers Saon and Rhone, and intercepting all the merchandize of Burgondy, Germany and Italy, it licks its fingers notably and thrives by it." ' Voyage of Italy,' 1670, vol. i. p. 33.

" The ordinary post route, and I think the easiest way of all the rest." Id., 66.

chairs see the frontispiece to Coryat's ' Crudities.' According to Rd. Symons the charge for carrying" down on the Italian side in 1649 was 5s. (Rd. Svmons's note-books, quoted in Mundy's ' Travels ' [Hakluyt Society, 1907], vol. i. p. 114). Edward Browne, in 1664, was carried down with much confidence and speed, though in rainy w'eather r two leagues in less than two hours. Letter,. Nov. 5, 1664 (Sir Thos. Browne's ' Works,' 1836 r i. 72).
 * For a representation of one of these carrying-

If ' Relation de Sebastien Locatelli,' ed. A.. Vautier, Paris, 1905, p. 4. There was a lift, probably of the same kind, in the Palais Mazarin. at Paris.