The hotels and inns, even in the smallest villages, are very nice and elegant in all their interior arrangements. These small villages consist usually of a crowded collection of the most quaint and queer-looking houses, or rather huts, of stone, with an antique and venerable-looking church in the midst of them, looking still more quaint and queer than the houses. The hotels, however, in these villages, or rather on the borders of them,-for the hotels are often built on the open ground beyond the town, where there is room for gardens and walks, and raised terraces around them,-are palaces in comparison with the dwellings of the inhabitants. And well they may be, for the villagers are almost all laborers of a very humble class-boatmen, who get their living by plying boats up and down the river; vinedressers, who cultivate the vineyards of the neighboring hills; or hostlers and coachmen, who take care of the carriages and of the horses employed in the traffic of the river. A great number of horses are employed; for not only are the carriages of such persons as choose to travel on the Rhine by land, or to make excursions on the banks of the river, drawn by them, but almost all the boats, except the steamboats that go up the river, are towed up by these animals. To enable them to do this, a regular tow path has been formed all the way up the river, on the left bank, and boats of all shapes and sizes are continually to be seen going up, drawn, like canal boats in America, by horses-and sometimes even by men. Once I saw some boys drawing up a small boat in this way. It seems they had been going down the stream to take a sail, or perhaps to convey a traveller down; and now they were coming up again, drawing their boat by walking along the bank, the current being so rapid that it is much easier to draw a boat up than it is to row it. The boys had a long line attached to the mast of their boat, and both of them were drawing upon this line by means of broad bands, forming a sort of harness, which were passed over their shoulders.
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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 Cæsar 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.
With such roads and such carriages on the land, and such pretty steamboats as they have upon the water, it would be very pleasant going up through the highlands of the Rhine, if there were nothing but the natural scenery to attract the eye of the traveller. But besides the quaint and ancient villages, and the curious old churches which adorn them,-villages which sometimes line the margin of the water, and sometimes cling to the slopes of the hills, or nestle in the higher valleys,-there are other still stronger attractions, in the castles, towers, and palaces, which are seen scattered every where on the river banks, adorning every prominent and commanding position along the shores, and crowning, in many cases, the summits of the hills. Many of these castles and towers, though built originally hundreds of years ago, are still kept in repair and inhabited, some being used as the summer residences of princes, or of private men of fortune, and others, being armed with cannon and garrisoned with soldiers, are held as strongholds by the kings, or dukes, or electors, in whose dominions they lie. There are a great many of them, however, that have been allowed to go to decay; and the ruins of these still stand, presenting to the eye of the traveller who gazes up to them from the deck of the steamer, or from his seat in his carriage, or who climbs up to visit them more closely, by means of the zigzag paths which lead to them, very interesting relics and memorials of ancient times. The ruins are generally on very lofty summits, and they usually occupy the most commanding positions, so that the view from them up and down the river is almost always very grand. The castles were built by the dukes, and barons, and other feudal chieftains of the middle ages, and they are placed in these commanding positions in order that the chieftains who lived in them might watch the river, and the roads leading along the banks of it, and come down with a troop of their followers to exact what they called tribute, but what those who had to pay it called plunder, from the merchants or travellers whom they saw from the windows of their watchtowers, passing up and down.
In fact these men were really robbers; being just like any other robbers, excepting that they restricted themselves to some rule and system in their plunderings, such as an enlightened regard for their own interest required. If, when they found a vessel laden with merchandise, or a company of travellers coming down the river, they had robbed them of every thing they possessed, the river and the roads would soon have been entirely abandoned, and their occupation would have been gone. In order to avoid this result, they were accustomed to content themselves with a certain portion of the value which the traveller was carrying; and they called the money which they exacted a tribute, or tax, paid for the privilege of passing through their dominions. They kept continual watch in their lofty castles, both up and down the river, to see who came by, and then, descending with a sufficient force to render resistance useless, they would take what they pretended to consider their due, and retreat with it to their almost inaccessible fastnesses, where they were safe from all pursuers.
They often had wars with one another; and in the progress of these wars the weaker chieftains became, in the course of time, subjected to the stronger, and thus two or more small dominions would often become united into one. These amalgamations went on continually; and as they advanced, the condition of the cultivator of the ground, and of the peaceful merchant or traveller, was improved, for the rules and regulations for the collection of the tribute became more fixed and settled, and men knew more and more what they could calculate upon, and could regulate their business accordingly. Arrangements were made, too, to collect a regular tax from the cultivators of the ground; and just so far as these arrangements were matured, and the produce of the plunder, or the tribute, or the tax, or whatever we call it, increased, just so far it became for the interest of the chieftains that the cultivation of the land and the traffic on the river should be increased, and should be protected from all depredations but their own. Thus a system of law grew up, and arrangements for preserving public order, for promoting the general industry, and rules and regulations for the collection of the tribute, until at length, when all these arrangements were matured, and the multitude of petty chieftains became combined under one great chieftain ruling over the whole, and collecting the revenue for his subordinates, we find a great kingdom as the result, in which the descendants of the ancient marauders that lived in castles on the hills, under the name of princes and nobles, collect the means of enabling themselves to live in idleness and luxury out of the avails of the labor of the agriculturists, the merchants, and the manufacturers, by a combined and concerted arrangement, and a regular system of rents, taxes, and tolls, instead of by irregular forrays and depredations, as in former years.