Practicability, comfort, cheapness, and speed – for all these qualities the water could more than hold its own against the land under even conditions; and a traveller from Italy to Munich finishes his journey by raft down the Iser and reckons himself a gainer in time by using that means in preference to horseback.
It is in France, however, that the importance of waterways reaches its maximum. Almost every tourist's way from Paris, except that by Picardy, lay along a line which a river traversed; the windings of the Seine did not prevent it being quite as convenient as the road; while the Loire and the Rhone were far more so; and for approaching Paris, the Garonne was very frequently part of one route, even up to its mouth; the upper Loire of another. An even clearer idea of the importance and amount of usage of riverways in France is gained by considering how Lyons has maintained a high and steady degree of prosperity before, during, and since the rise and fall of Venice and of Amsterdam, and how at this period the only neglected parts of France were those which lay between the chief rivers, which have, in fact, so far dictated the course to be followed by the main road routes that the neglected parts of France are the same now as then. To Lyons the Rhone gave access to Italy, Spain, and Africa; twelve leagues away the Loire becomes navigable, and from Gien on the Loire was one day's journey to a tributary of the Seine, the Loing: which three rivers put Lyons in touch with North Spain, most of France and all northern Europe. Neither was Lyons very far from the Rhine and the Danube.
In Spain alone were the rivers unused by the traveller. In southern Italy they were less used than in Roman times, when passenger traffic was customary on the Tiber and smaller rivers,36 which certainly was not the case three hundred years ago; the disuse of the lower reaches of the Tiber is accounted for by the fear of the Turks, to prevent an attack on Rome by whom the mouth of the river was closed. In North Italy on the other hand, the Adige, Brenta, and Po are frequently mentioned; the Po, indeed, from Turin must have been as constantly in use as any river in Europe in proportion to its length. From Mantua to Ferrara in 157437 a boat sailed every night as a matter of course; between Mantua and Venice communication by water was regular in 1591, and even from Milan to Venice it was quite an ordinary thing to travel by the Po, finishing the journey along the Adige to Chioggia by means of a canal which linked up the two rivers. As for the Brenta, it had its own proverb, that the passenger boat (between Padua and Venice) would sink when it contained neither monk, student, nor courtesan, which is as much as to say that the tourist would always find company, as well as a boat, ready.
It is in connection with the waterways of North Italy that one of the debated questions of Shakespeare's life has arisen: as to how much, or how little, he knew of Italy first hand. But hitherto the commentators have been contented with so little evidence that his references to them have been misinterpreted and the accuracy of the impression that they give, and would give still more distinctly had his editors done him justice, has been denied. A recent writer38 has set out the facts and some evidence so clearly that there is no need to add to the latter further than has already been done by the few instances just mentioned: a few out of an almost indefinite number which are to be found in the writings of these tourists contemporary with Shakespeare, who are surely the most satisfactory witnesses in a case like this, wholly concerned with what he, if a tourist, would have seen. What they show is that in practically every North Italian town passenger traffic by water formed part of the daily life, and that is the impression clearly shared by Shakespeare. When he represents the passenger traffic in an Italian river being dependent on the tide, it must be remembered that he lived near old London Bridge, where the tidal rush was tremendous; and that for his purpose in writing accuracy did not matter in the very least. Neither is any mistake of his over routes to be compared with one of the careful Villamont, who asserts that he reached Este from Padua by the Brenta and that the Brenta is navigable no farther than Este. Now Este is southwest of Padua and the Brenta reaches the latter from northwest and never gets within seventeen miles of Este; but what is more particularly to be noted is that Villamont's "Voyages" was the book of European travel most frequently reprinted in Shakespeare's lifetime and that the error was never corrected. At the same time, it is, perhaps, worth while laying stress on the fact that no deduction can be made from all this as to whether Shakespeare ever left England or the reverse, because his capacity for using second-hand knowledge was so unique that it may be said of him as can be said of probably no other writer, that it is impossible to make a reasonable guess as to when his knowledge is first-hand and when it is not.
Another subject which needs to be treated here, although at first sight it also seems out of place, is that of the characteristics of the islands of Europe as seen by foreigners; for among the advantages of choosing the sea must be reckoned acquaintance with those places which one would never get a glimpse of without a voyage; that is, those which ships touched at but which did not form parts of the tourist's objective. Far and away the chief of these were the islands of the Levant. The opinion that the tourists have of them is probably rose-coloured by the fact that these broke the monotony of a longer voyage than they had need of otherwise; but the fact remains that all agree in depicting them as the spots where human life was at its pleasantest. Of Chios, in particular, might be used the childlike phrase which the Italians used to express the height of happiness, – it was like touching heaven with one's fingers. Nowhere was there greater freedom or greater pleasure. Such was Della Valle's opinion, who calls it "the pleasure-place of the Archipelago and the garden of Greece"; nothing but singing, dancing, and talking with the ladies of the isle, not only in daytime but up to four or five in the morning. Their costume was the only thing in Chios that could have been improved and this seems to refer to the style only, for Lithgow says that they were so sumptuously apparelled that workmen's wives went in satin and taffety, and cloth of gold, and silver, with jewelled rings and bracelets; and when he goes on to say that they were the most beautiful women he ever saw, it is worth remembering that he not only covered more ground in Europe, but visited a greater number of the islands of the Mediterranean than any of the others. Besides, there are so many to confirm it; and although three hundred years ago there was little of what we call appreciation of nature, or rather, of the modern custom of definitely expressing such appreciation, there was no lack of appreciation, and expression of appreciation, of nature when taking a human and feminine form. Singing, too, seems to have been part of living hereabouts: in Crete, for instance, the men, women, and children of a household would usually sing together for an hour after dinner. When there was a seamy side to their life it was associated with politics; in this same Crete Lithgow stayed for fifty-eight days and never saw a Greek leave his house unarmed: generally it was with a steel cap, a long sword, a bow, dagger, and target-shield. In Zante, too, labourers went to the fields armed; but then it must be taken into account that the men of Zante were peculiarly murderous; if a merchant refused to buy from them his life would be in danger: and also, it was under Venetian rule, a double evil; first, because it had no other object than that of benefitting Venetians, and secondly, it implied opposition to the Turks, which was worse, much worse, than the rule of the Turks. Chios was under Turkish rule; so was Coos, the next happiest place, very rarely visited, but well worth it, partly for what Della Valle calls the "Amorevolezza" of that generation, partly because there were still to be seen the houses of Hippocrates, Hercules, and Peleus, Achilles' father. At Corfu was the house of Judas; also his descendants, however much the latter denied their ancestry; and near Lesbos, the islet called Monte Sancto because it was thither that the Devil