A Feast-Day on the Rhone by Thomas A. Janvier

Of all the rivers which, being navigable, do serious work in the world the Rhone is the most devil-may-care and light-hearted. In its five hundred mile dash down hill from the Lake of Geneva to the Mediterraenean its only purpose -- other than that of doing all the mischief possible -- seems to be frolic fun. And yet for more than two thousand years this apparently frivolous, and frequently malevolent, river has been very usefully employed in the service of mankind.

In the misty barbaric ages before history fairly began, and in the early times of the Roman domination, the Rhone was the sole highway into northern Gaul from the Mediterraenean; later, when the Gallic system of Roman roads had been constructed, it held its own fairly well against the two roads which paralleled it -- that on the east bank throughout almost its entire length, and that on the west bank from Lyons southward to a point about opposite to the present Montelimar; in the semi-barbarous Middle Ages -- when the excitements of travel were increased by the presence of a robber-count at every ford and in every mountain-pass -- it became again more important than the parallel highways on land; and in our own day the conditions of Roman times, relatively speaking, are restored once more by steamboats on the river and railways on the lines of the ancient roads. And so, having served these several masters, the Rhone valley of the present day is stored everywhere with remnants of the barbarism, of the civilization, and of the semi-barbarism which successively have been ploughed under its surface before what we have the temerity to call our own civilization began. Keltic flints and pottery underlie Roman ruins; just beneath the soil, or still surviving above it, are remains of Roman magnificence; and on almost all the hill-tops still stand the broken strongholds of the robber nobles who maintained their nobility upon what they were lucky enough to be able to steal. Naturally -- those ruined castles, and the still-existent towns of the same period, being so conspicuously in evidence -- the flavour of the river is most distinctly Mediaeval; but a journey in this region, with eyes open to perceive as well as to see, is a veritable descent into the depths of the ancient past.