Through Scandinavia to Moscow

In the evening, our guide, who had privately confessed to me that within the year he would travel to New York there to become manager of a great hotel, led us to one of the more notable Bier Garten, where we saw a most German vaudeville, the feats of whose performers were greeted with vociferous hochs, and where we listened to a splendid band, and where H had her first sight of ponderous Germans absorbing beer, with which spectacle she was much impressed.

Wednesday, we were early astir, driving to the Hamburgischer Bahnhoff, where we took the fast nine o’clock express for Hamburg, and flew along over a well-ballasted road-bed through a dead-flat country, in what the Germans proudly call their “fastest” train. The panorama was one of market gardens and intensely cultivated land. It was a monotonous prospect, where the alikeness of the vistas was emphasized by the sentinel stiffness of the ever recurring rows of Lombardy-poplars. As in Russia, men and women were everywhere working in the fields and gardens, but unlike Russia, they were well clad and well fed, and bore an air of thrifty contentment. There was no dilapidation anywhere. We saw no longer the tumbled-down shacks of the mujik, but everywhere substantial, neat homesteads of brick and stone.

Ours was a through train connecting with the Hamburg-American Line of steamers for New York, and with the through railway express traffic for France and Belgium, via Cologne. The passengers were chiefly of the well-to-do commercial classes, or those substantial travelers who would hasten quickly between Germany and France. None the less, at the few stations where we halted, did the entire company instantly burst forth, hastening to the long counters, where they convulsively swallowed foaming schooners of beer and eagerly devoured sundry dainties, such as rye bread spread with goose grease and over-laid with kraut or wurst, and varnished pretzels salted to the limit. Even the babies were held at the open windows and foaming mugs of beer poured into them by their fond parents. The passion of the German for his bier equals the Russian’s thirst for vodka.

We reached Hamburg a little after half past one, when, taking a fiacre, we immediately drove to Cook’s Tourists’ Agency, where I booked to London, via Amsterdam, The Hague, the Hook of Holland, and Harwich. Then, for an hour, we strolled about the city.

Hamburg possesses fine retail shops and abounds in restaurants, Bier-Keller and Wein-Stuben, establishments devoted to the solace of the inner man.

Stricken with hunger-pangs, and not knowing just where to go, I accosted a tall and prosperous-looking burger, telling him we were Americans in search of food. Lifting his hat, he “begged to be allowed to guide us to the finest Wein Stube” in the town, whither his own steps were at that moment bent. He led the way to a quiet side street, where, descending a flight of stone steps, he introduced us to the portly master of the stube. We entered a succession of large cellars, paneled and ceiled in oak and floored with patterned tiles, where small round-topped wooden tables were set about. We were conducted to a cozy corner, and Rhine wine, cheese, sausage and fresh rye bread were set before us, as well as mustard and sour pickles and pats of sweet unsalted butter, and to this was added a palatable stew.

The room was filled with men – big, well-fed, well-clothed men, apparently merchants, ship-masters and men of affairs. They fell-to upon their flagons of wein, their wurst and kraut, their braten and fisch with serious and deliberate devotion. It was that time of day when, in America, the prospering businessman eats lightly, smokes sparingly and touches liquor not at all, holding his intellect alert and whetted to its keenest edge. We watched with wonder these men of Hamburg, while they poured down quart after quart of wine, the air growing thick with the fumes of strong tobacco. This capacity of Hans to eat heavily and mightily liquor-up and yet transact affairs, bespeaks a hardness of head and toughness of stomach which ranks him neck and neck alongside his cousin Bull as co-champion of the bibulating, gastronomizing world.

Although H was the only woman in the stube, being recognized as Americans, we were treated by the company with greatest courtesy and that invariable friendliness with which, in Germany, my countrymen are everywhere received.

Upon departing, Mein Host presented me with an attractive little ash-tray to add to my collection of souvenirs and, with much ceremony, bestowed also upon mine frau an illuminated catalogue of his store of wines.

Later, we entered a comfortable landau and for several hours were driven about the city. Hamburg has always been an important city and one where great volume of business has been transacted. In the Middle Ages it was a member of the Hanseatic League; in after days it was a Free City and, even at this time, its citizens view its absorption within the German Empire not altogether with satisfaction. It bears the marks of great antiquity. Quaint and picturesque are the lofty mediaeval buildings which lean over its canals, where men and women push, with long poles, blunt-ended canal boats and clumsy-looking, but storm-proof, sloops and luggers, among perpetual cries and clamors; where sturdy black tug boats incessantly shove their way; and where is a jam and jostle of inland water-life not unlike that seen in Holland. Many narrow streets cross these canals on high-built bridges, bearing a continuous and deliberately-moving traffic.

Hamburg also possesses noble boulevards, long and straight and wide, and well-shaded with umbrageous lindens, where, set back behind high walls and strong-barred gates, are miles of sumptuous mansions, in which her merchant princes maintain their households in unostentatious luxury. The wealth of the merchants of Hamburg is said to exceed that of the aristocratic office-holding classes of Berlin.

There are also spacious docks in Hamburg, convenient and modernly equipped, where, year by year, gathers an increasing shipping to fetch and carry the rapidly developing foreign commerce of the German Empire. The wealth and energy of the German Hinterlands pours itself eagerly into Hamburg’s lap and the ancient mediaeval city now finds itself, unlike somnolent Copenhagen, at the very forefront of Europe’s activity. Hamburg is, commercially, more alive and active than Berlin, and as a port receives more shipping than London. Hamburg is almost as wide awake as is New York.

After our drive, we came to the Hotel Europaer, where we dined and rested, and then departed a little before midnight for Amsterdam. Although this is the regular passenger service to Holland, there was no through sleeper, and we were compelled to change at Oestenburg, where we caught the night express from Cologne. Then in a comfortable “schlafwagen,” wrapped in our sea-rugs, we slept soundly the balance of the night.

We arrived at Amsterdam near eight o’clock and found our way to the Hotel Victoria, near the station, where I enjoyed such delicious coffee two years ago, and there we breakfasted: coffee, – a great pot of fragrant Java, – abundant milk, sweet and delicious, – rolls and big fresh eggs, and a fish which much resembled the Danish roed spoette and English sole. It was a delightful breakfast, such as one is always sure to have in Holland.

Two years ago, I devoted my time to viewing the city, so now we resolved to see somewhat of the country beyond the limits of the town. Thus it happened that we boarded a taut little boat in the midmorning and all day long steamed through canals, with many locks, passing above picturesque farmsteads and villages, down upon which we looked from the higher level of the diked-up waters, and floated at last upon the Zuyder Zee. We later visited the Island of Maarken with its fisher-folk in quaint and ancient costume. Once “simple peasants,” but now, alas! ruined by the staring, money-shedding tourist. We had scarcely set foot upon the Island, when we were stormed by a horde of men and women, boys and girls, each demanding “mooney,” and imploring us to snap the kodak at them for the cash; begging us also to visit their particular homes, where we would[Pg 223][Pg 224] be allowed to look inside the door, and perhaps inspect the house, for more Dutch cents and even gulden. So persistent were these “simple fisher-folk” that I almost fell into dire mishap. H suggested she should take my photograph, whereupon I arranged myself before the camera, when, just as the kodak clicked, a vrow and several kinderen rushed up and took position by my side, thus necessarily appearing in the picture, as you will see. The lady backed by her brood thereupon demanded, “Mooney, mooney, mooney.” Naturally, I refused to pay for what had been given without request. The little company immediately raised a loud lament, at sound of which an immense and bow-legged fisherman appeared upon the scene, lifting a great oar and threatening my annihilation, unless money were put up. However, I was firm and fearless, and finally convinced him that I had not requested the family to stand before the lens, while I showed him I had already added half a gulden to his chest for inspection of the home. Comprehending this at last, his anger then turned upon his spouse, and he sulkily drove her and the kinderen within their door, using language that sounded much like the English damn.

Leaving the Island, we came home across the Zee and passed through the huge new locks of the River Amstel, the “Dam” of which, keeping out the waters of the Zuyder Zee, gives to the city its name, —Amstel-dam.

The little boat we sailed upon was chiefly filled with Holland folk, for we were behind the tourist season. They were a quiet, undemonstrative company and, on the deck, sat about in little groups and were served with Schiedam schnapps in small glasses by white-aproned waiters and smoked long, light-colored Sumatra cigars. The proverbial Hollander, fat and chunky with an enormous pipe, is now a mere tradition. The Dutchman of to-day, like his English cousin, is long and lean, and might almost be taken for a New England Yankee.

An hour by rail brought us to “Den Haag.” We passed among broad meadows, marked by wide black ditches from which gigantic pumps incessantly suck out the seeping waters and pour them into the sea. These meadows were once the bottom of the ocean, the soil being composed of the rich alluvial silt which the continental rivers have for centuries discharged. Indeed, Holland may be said to consist of the submerged deltas of the rivers Scheldt and Rhine, which the indefatigable industry of man has rescued from the sea. These lands are of inexhaustible fertility and upon them, everywhere, we saw grazing herds of black-and-white Holstein cows, whence come the butter and cheese for which Holland is famous, and the delicious milk which is so abundantly offered us at every meal. The roadbed ran high above the meadows, down upon which we looked. Here and there we espied a cluster of neat farm buildings, reminding me much of the Dutch homesteads along the Hudson River valley, and stretching from Albany along the Mohawk, in New York, – with this difference, however, that here, each house and barn and garden lay surrounded with its own diminutive canal, where were little foot-bridges and skiffs fastened near the kitchen door, even a large canal boat being often moored against a barn, the better to float away the loaded hay. The Dutchman finds life intolerable unless he has his own canal right at his threshold.

Farther along, the landscape was marked with innumerable windmills turning their ponderous arms slowly to the breeze which crept in from the sea; we counted I do not know how many, there seemed never to be an end. The people we saw were stout and rosy-cheeked, and moved with less alertness than do the Norwegians, nor did they have about them that air of busy-ness which the modern German begins to show. The impression made by the Hollander is that of sureness and deliberation. The cocky strut of the Frenchman, who moves ever as though on dress-parade, is entirely wanting to the Hollander, whose demure exterior gives no hint of the wealth, the talent, the high importance hid within.

The journey from Amsterdam to The Hague takes scarcely an hour, and before we knew it we drew in to the large station of the Dutch capital. The soldierly-clad porters are not here as numerous as in Germany, nor did those who served us move with so self-conscious and self-important a gait. Men in quiet, dark-blue uniforms quickly put our baggage into an open fiacre and we drove to the hotel of the “Twe Stadten,” a comfortable inn facing a large well-shaded “park.” We were given a commodious chamber looking out upon a pretty garden and dined, at a later hour, in the long, low-ceilinged dining room. The guests were few, only one other party beside ourselves dining thus late. They were two tall and white-haired dames, gowned in black silk with much old lace round about the throat, and with them a petite and pretty Señorita, who spoke in Spanish and insisted upon puffing cigarettes. She led the way from the dining room smoking jauntily, the two chaperones following respectfully behind.

In the morning we spent delightful hours in the national picture galleries looking at the priceless collections of the Rembrandts and Rubens, which the Dutch government has here assembled; in the afternoon we strolled about the clean, quiet city, beneath the over-spreading elms; and then we supped at Scheveningen, where we saw the sea again and the last of the season’s fashionable folk.

A moment before leaving our hotel to take the train, which would carry us to The Hook, I had my last adventure among the canny Dutch. Upon the table in our chamber lay an attractive little ash-receiver, which any smoker must needs long to own. Quite naturally, it became entangled with our sundry purchases and scattered belongings and with them was inadvertently put away. Just as we were quitting the apartment, the head waiter of the inn, in whose charge we seemed to be, burst in upon us with wild anxiety in his eye and explained in broken English, that he instantly observed, upon scrutinizing the chamber, that a most valuable piece of Delft ware had mysteriously disappeared. Perhaps we had broken it? At any rate, it was gone and he would be held responsible for its loss. Two gulden would barely replace it! “What should he do?” Naturally, I explained that my wife by mistake had probably packed it up, and begged him to advise the office that, upon settling my bill, it would give me pleasure to deposit two gulden against the loss. At a later time, when exhibiting this relic to wiser eyes, I was forced to recognize that the little ash-receiver was merely common ware, of value perhaps ten Dutch cents! So much for the knowing Dutchman who traps the traveler in search of souvenirs!

Two hours after leaving The Hague we were upon the ship which would carry us to England. By early morning we were again at Harwich, and we arrived in London by mid-afternoon. Our only fellow passenger upon the train was a tall, dark, silent man, who carried with him an enormous overcoat of fur. We thought him a Russian, and wondered if he also had come directly from the Empire of the Czar.

We are now returned to London, whence we departed five weeks ago. We have crossed the North Sea, and journeyed through Denmark, and Norway, and Sweden, and visited their capitals. We have voyaged across the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Finland; we have caught a passing glimpse of Helsingfors, and looked upon St. Petersburg and Moscow, and traveled many hundred versts through the Empire of the Czar. We have sped through Germany and felt at home in the noble cities of Berlin and Hamburg. We have tarried in Amsterdam and Den Haag, where we felt the strangely familiar atmosphere of Dutch New York. We have looked upon many peoples of the Teutonic races and, when among them, have felt that subtle throb of kinship, which common blood and common origin awake; we have also plunged a moment within the mediaeval and yet semi-barbarous dominions of the Slav and found ourselves upon the threshold of mysterious Asia.

We have everywhere been thankful in our hearts that we were born and bred beneath the Stars and Stripes in the great Republic of the West, where hope and opportunity are not merely our own, but are also the loadstars which beckon thither the youth and vigor of these older peoples of the World.

notes

1

The reverses of the Japanese War, the assassination of Governor Bobrikoff and threat of revolution have at last frightened the Russian Autocracy into partially restoring to Finland her pillaged liberties.

2

These letters were written in the early autumn of the year, 1902, and present a glimpse of Russia as it then appeared.

3

I have subsequently learned that the legal fee is about three rubles ($1.50), the charge of ten rubles being impudent graft.