CHAPTER VIII
THE PURSE

The cost of travelling divides itself into two kinds; direct and indirect: that is, into the outlay which the traveller must reckon on and that which he has to reckon with. The first kind, the necessities, consists of fares, food, lodging, passports, tolls, etc., together with loss by exchange of money or by charges on remittances. The second kind, the possibilities, includes loss by robbery, by war, by disease, lack of legal privileges, ignorance of local custom, and such like eventualities in so far as any one was liable to suffer from them through being a stranger in a strange land.

But before considering the most elementary necessaries, some working arrangement must be established about translating payments into terms of English money of the present day. In the first place, between 1542 and 1642 money fell from about nine times its present value to about five times. Dates must therefore be found within which the multiplication figure must become successively nine, eight, seven, six. Suppose the first figure be taken up to 1556, when the States General met at Brussels to deal with Philip II's debt; the second figure thence to 1589, the year when the failure of the Spanish Armada began to tell on economics; seven from 1589 to 1612, at which date the bankruptcy of the Welser firm affected all Europe; and six thenceforward. If these are reasonable fictions, it is the utmost that can be achieved; in so far as they are not, the definiteness of the system makes correction of it easier. Amounts arrived at by these reckonings are given in square brackets. Usually, however, the original amounts have first to be translated out of continental coinage into contemporary English, a process which involves a series of comparisons too long to be tabulated here, and often, even then, needing modification as a result of the context in which the particular statement occurs. This is mentioned only as indicating a fresh source of uncertainty, and possibly of error. A third factor in these amounts as here given is as reliable as the two former factors are unreliable; every original amount represents an actual transaction by a traveller between 1542 and 1642, except where otherwise stated.

Necessities and possibilities are sometimes found considered jointly in general estimates. Sir Philip Sidney considered his brother should have two hundred pounds a year allowed him for travelling. This was in 1578, and he would be reckoning according to the highest standard that a young Englishman would have a use for.

Dallington, a guide-book writer, speaking for Englishmen in France in 1598, estimates eighty pounds a year; if one servant is taken and riding-lessons required, one hundred and fifty pounds; over two hundred pounds is excessive; while another, Cleland, in his "Institution of a Young Nobleman" (1607) considers two hundred pounds a year enough for four persons. Howell (1642) says three hundred pounds for the youngster at Paris, with fifty pounds each in addition for a cook, a valet, and a page; but then Howell had acted as tutor and no doubt hoped to do so again as soon as he could get free from the Fleet Prison, where he lay when his pamphlet was published. Under these circumstances he was likely to be considering his own pocket rather than the father's. Nevertheless, two of the brothers Coligny [Henri II's courtiers], when planning a year's tour through Italy in 1546, were said to have put aside fourteen thousand scudi [£30,000] for expenses; which annoyed their uncle.[117] But within a year or two of this estimate, Evelyn was travelling farther afield than Paris,—he stayed seven months in Rome alone,—keeping one servant throughout, sometimes two, learning under several masters, and making costly and extensive purchases, on less than three hundred pounds annually. Of Sir Richard Fanshawe, again, his wife records that "during some years of travel" (less than seven, for certain) "he had spent a considerable part of his stock"; this stock consisted of what his parents had bequeathed him, fifteen hundred pounds, and fifty pounds a year: his travel lay mainly in France and Spain previous to 1630.

Fynes Moryson, too, gives his expenditure as from fifty to sixty pounds a year, which included the cost of two journeys, one in spring, one in autumn. He was accustomed to the best standard of living at home, but his income was hardly adequate to his social position and by temperament he was a temperate and adaptable man; more so, to say the least, than the son of Davison, the Secretary of State whom Queen Elizabeth made the scapegoat for the death of Queen Mary Stewart.

Father Davison had been told that one hundred marks would suffice for his boy abroad each year, and, consequently, in sending the latter to Italy in 1595 with a tutor, and a servant, allowed him treble that amount, one hundred pounds. The tutor writes, "I never endured such slavery in my life to save money"; if Mr. Davison does not see his way to changing his mind about the one hundred pounds a year, will he kindly find another tutor? As to the "frugal travellers" whose travelling costs them no more than the one hundred marks a year, he does not wish to deny it; in fact, he knows such men; and very sorry he is for those who have lent them the rest they have spent.

From all this one may conclude that the equivalent of four hundred pounds a year was the minimum for respectable travelling and that the Average Tourist would certainly need at least half as much again. But this is assuming that all who were respectable, or above the need to be so, paid all their own expenses, which was far from being the case. There were plenty of rich travellers who defrayed all charges for a large following. Landgraf Ludwig II of Hessen-Darmstadt[118] even paid a certain knight to accompany him, six hundred florins [£600] down and fifty florins a month, besides expenses and clothes. So when Cardinal Luigi d'Aragona toured Europe, starting May 9, 1517, and arriving home March 16, 1518, and spent about fifteen thousand ducats [£35,000] meantime, in which "eating and drinking were the least costly items," we may conclude that the thirty-five persons he took with him, and the forty-five he brought back, received at least expenses. Another churchman, Johann Gottfried von Aschhausen, bishop of Würzburg, left Strassburg in 1612 with a retinue of one hundred and thirty, twenty-one of whom were young men of high birth. Before he passed out of Germany this number was increased by fifty more. He was away a year in Italy, which cost him thirty-two thousand seven hundred and fifty-four scudi [£40,000].[119]

But since he went as the Emperor's ambassador, this is rather a fresh example of how travelling was facilitated by embassies. For among the advantages of various kinds that rendered accompanying the journeyings of diplomatists the best means of seeing the world, the economical advantages were as important as any. It by no means followed, however, that anything but board and lodging were provided by him; in the detailed accounts of Sir G. Chaworth regarding his special embassy to Brussels is no mention of outlay on anything but necessaries. On the other hand, we find another English ambassador giving one hundred pounds apiece to the gentlemen who were to accompany him, to provide their outfit.[120] In any case, this expedient extended only as far as the ambassador went, a specially important limitation for Englishmen of Queen Elizabeth's day, since she had no ambassador at Venice throughout her reign; and even when James I sent one thither he was, during his first term of office, the only English ambassador in Italy. Bearing this in mind, and turning to other methods whereby the Average Tourist from England might reduce his expenditure, we come upon what is, perhaps, the most remarkable fact of the time in regard to the kind, and the extent, of the usefulness with which travel was credited, namely, that Queen Elizabeth subsidised it. It is obvious from the life-stories of all those who served her that they were treated with extreme stinginess and that employment by the government meant heavy expense instead of salaries; and yet, as to travel, these are the words of Bacon, who had excellent means of knowing the facts: "There was a constant course held, that by the advice of the secretaries, or some principal councillor, there was always sent forth into the parts beyond the seas some young men of whom good hopes were conceived of their towardliness, to be trained up and made fit for such public employments and to learn the languages. This was at the charge of the Queen, which was not much, for they travelled but as private gentlemen."[121]

Ecclesiastics, it goes almost without saying, received special terms, mainly in the shape of free lodging at religious houses, although the opinion of one abbé ought not to go unrecorded,—"avoid monasteries," because the charities expected amounted to more than inn-charges. This certainly did not apply to Muscovy, where, if a monastery could be found, it undoubtedly did mean free board and lodging for the three days, the usual limit of time, universally, for claimers of charity. But what with monasteries and special foundations there must have been far more really free accommodation than is apparent from tourist-books, written as the latter almost entirely are by the class that paid its way. Even apart from the above there were incidents such as one recorded in 1650, of eight thousand pilgrims to Rome from Spain being fed and housed for three days at Naples at the expense of the Spanish viceroy there. At Compostella, too, for two reals [7s. 6d.] could be obtained a parchment document with a cardinal's seal attached, recommending the bearer for alms as one who was on his way to other places of pilgrimage; and in Italy not even that much was needed, inasmuch as the natives were then so averse to begging that foreigners who had no such scruples found little difficulty in traversing it at next to no cost.

Where a begging-license was necessary, that could easily be obtained also by being, or pretending to be, a student. Loyola lived in term-time at Paris on what he gained by begging at fairs in Flanders and England during holidays. Another useful option open to students, of whatever social position, was the exemption from local tolls, frequently a privilege belonging to all who had matriculated at the university of the district; the graduate of Padua, for instance, was exempt throughout Venetian territory. It so happened that one of these tourists[122] was elected rector of Bologna University during his stay there in 1575, and that during his term of office some students were forced to pay taxes. He and the managing body at once appealed to the Pope, who not only confirmed, but extended, the immunities. In Italy the tolls were so oppressive that the matriculation fees, twenty lire [£5] at Padua, twelve at Bologna, were soon made good, even supposing them to have been paid; at Bologna, at least, matriculation could be obtained for nothing by applying in formâ pauperis. The examination was no bar worth mentioning. In Germany, moreover, according to Moryson, the tenancy of a house often carried with it the obligation to board and lodge a student free. Another traveller who economised thoroughly was Sastrow, who, on reaching Rome, took service at the hospital of Santa Brigitta, cooked, washed-up, made the beds, and received the equivalent of 2s. 6d. a month, while Jacques Callot, the artist, when he ran away from home, took the way to Italy in the company of those gypsies who appear in those sketches of his which form one of the most vivid memorials of the travelling life of the time. Yet with all these opportunities which presented themselves to the needy, we are told that Turkey was the only country of Europe where poverty was no bar to travel.

Outside Europe fresh estimates have to be quoted. The fare to Jaffa and back by the pilgrim-galley varied from fifty to sixty ducats [say £100]: this included food. Additional expenses brought the ordinary cost of a visit to Jerusalem from Venice under these earlier conditions up to three or four hundred pounds in present-day values. This, of course, omits the expenses of the pilgrim between his home and Venice. The minimum recorded cost for this period is represented by the two hundred and twenty crowns [£350] spent by one Switzer in thirty weeks, and two hundred and twenty-eight crowns spent by another, a barber, in eleven months (1583-84),[123] of which times only about three months, in each case, was taken up by the voyage from Venice to Jerusalem and back, the remainder being devoted to Italy. The pilgrimage may be considered as accounting for but little more than two hundred pounds of the expenditure of each. Many went, moreover, who never possessed this much, since it was common for one man to go as deputy for several, who jointly defrayed his expenses; and it was also a common form of charity for rich pilgrims to pay for poor ones. Later, in fact, they were often forced to do so by the Turks when the latter had reduced to beggary those who had come away with too little, which led to there arising a custom among pilgrims of showing each other their money; if one refused, the others avoided his company to escape the possibility of being compelled to pay for him.

With the cessation of the pilgrim-galley the cost of the pilgrimage doubled itself, what with the increased length of the journey due to a roundabout way having to be taken, and, still more, to its increased duration, owing to the uncertainty; especially as every day additional brought its own additional risks and extortions. Moryson and his brother spent four hundred and eighty pounds [nearly, if not quite, £3000].

Certain circumstances raised the cost to him above the average, and he was away more than a year and a half, whereas the journey would be done within the year ordinarily. On the other hand, as his brother died near Aleppo, the return-journey represents the expenditure of one man instead of two. How a thrifty man who was used to roughing it would be forced to spend the equivalent of one thousand pounds or more on a journey that would nowadays cost him about sixty-five pounds is partly explained by the exactions of the Turks. When Sandys was at Jerusalem the monks of S. Salvatore had just been compelled to pay eight hundred dollars [£900] for an imaginary offence. When Lithgow arrived late one night after the gates had been shut, the friars let down food to him over the wall; the Turks, being informed of this, insisted they must have been importing weapons, and inflicted another fine, one hundred piasters [£125]. It is not surprising, then, that with expenses like these, and ordinary expenses to match, the monks expected sums from the pilgrims that seem at first sight outrageous. To Lithgow they made a definite charge of a piaster [£1 10s.] a day for board and lodging alone; but their general custom was to throw themselves on the traveller's generosity and grumble at the result.

Neither did the Franks suffer from indirect exactions only. The price for entrance to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre went on increasing, from nothing at all in the fourteenth century to four zecchini [£10] in 1606. Some mention fees of four times that amount, but this higher sum included the toll at the city gate, the two being collected simultaneously and so mistaken for one charge: the Turks farmed the revenue from the Holy Sepulchre for eight thousand sultanons [over £19,000], says Sandys. Extras were almost endless, yet very few of them left any change out of a gold coin; the fee for the certificate of visitation, without which the poorest pilgrim would not think of departing, was three zecchini [seven guineas], while the knighthood, nominally thirty zecchini, does not seem to have been granted for less than ten. The monastery servants were liable to excommunication if they accepted a tip, but they gladly risked damnation for a zecchino, and, indeed, insisted on doing so.

By spending not more than a week at Jerusalem and that at a time which may profanely be termed out of the season, it was possible to see the sights of the city itself for the equivalent of £50; at any rate, that happened in 1676;[124] do as most Franks did, spend Easter there, and ten days or a fortnight, and accompany the excursions, cost nearly double that. On the journey, the tributes may be imagined from the fact that Sandys thought it worth while to pay four shariffs [£10] for a passport which saved a few of them; nothing availed against an Arab chief who sent to demand seven zecchini [sixteen guineas] a head, and then came in person to demand five more. Moreover, besides the special outfit to be bought, the charges themselves were always reckoned on the basis that a Frank must have heaps of money; from Rama to Jerusalem alone, one day's journey, another seven zecchini had to be paid to the dragoman, and the same amount coming back.

A considerable saving might be effected by hiring a Janizary at seven aspers [2s.] a day: his services more than paid for his keep; and there were times when even a Frank found himself living at an easy rate. This happened when he stayed at a "fondaco," or depôt of Christian traders, or so it may be inferred from casual remarks backed up by two definite instances in years far apart. The German Fürer lived so at Alexandria and Cairo for the equivalent of five shillings a day in 1565, and in 1625 two Germans[125] were received for two months free of all charges at the Venetian "fondaco" at Cairo.

Far above all economies, however, was the system known as "putting-out" money—and this applied to travel inside, as well as outside, Christendom. The mediæval custom of presenting offerings before starting had died out; sixteenth-century tourists only offered prayers, and, for the rest, often expected to take up, at their homecoming, all they had left behind them with additions, or even multiplication. They deposited, or "put out," money before their departure on that condition. The custom is said to have been developed in the Netherlands[126] during the first half of the sixteenth century out of a pilgrims' practice of leaving a will behind them in favour of a friend on the understanding that the pilgrim was to receive double the bequest if he came back. It would seem from what Moryson says that the custom was barely known in England till the last decade of the sixteenth century, and then spread so rapidly that it fell into disrepute, bankrupts employing it to reinstate themselves, and actors, then the scum of the populace, to gain notoriety. He apologises for his brother Henry doing it, who put out four hundred pounds to be repaid twelve hundred pounds if he came back from Jerusalem. If allusions to the practice in contemporary English literature[127] can be trusted, he drove a bad bargain; according to them he might have arranged for his hypothetical profit to be five hundred instead of three hundred per cent, the latter rate being granted against journeys to Italy. The only other instance known of an actual transaction of this kind was calculated to yield two thousand per cent [£10 to be repaid £200]; but this was against a voyage to Russia, near the middle of the century, from London, whence only one ship was known to have sailed thither and returned.

Life insurance in its present form was also adopted by some persons before starting for abroad; but public opinion condemned every form of life insurance equally as immoral, and in the Netherlands, France, and Genoa it was forbidden by law, "travel-wagers" being specially mentioned in the proclamations. The rate, however, is the point which specially concerns us here, as indicative of the risks of travel. At the present day, for all the parts of the world touched upon in this book, the safest insurance company will not only lay fifty to one that the traveller will return, in place of the rate then of three to five to one that he would not, but will further insure him against accidents at a lower rate than if he became a London butcher. The system is of interest, too, as marking the transition from mediæval to modern methods of insurance; from "protections" granted by the stronger to the weaker for a premium which took the form of personal service, to the capitalist's bond; the guarantee of redress by force being superseded by guarantee of reimbursement by a business man, because the latter had become both more feasible and more satisfactory.

It is clear, then, that, given the most favourable circumstances, the traveller might not only make his journeys pay their own expenses, but might clear a handsome profit. Yet how far these circumstances were made the most of is a question that has at present to be decided on negative evidence alone, the verdict on which must be that no case is made out. In leaving, therefore, the general estimates for details, both have to be put forward as net, subject to the mitigations already referred to.

The fare from Dover to Calais was five shillings throughout this period. So invariable was this charge that when a certain boatman was suspected of being in league with the Roman Catholic seminarists in France because he conveyed across some ladies who were religious fugitives, he was considered not guilty on its being ascertained that he had charged them one pound each for the passage.[128] This five-shilling charge did not include the cost of boarding and landing when that required, as so often happened, the use of small boats, or of porters wading out. Between Flushing and Gravesend 6s. 8d. seems to have been the fare.[129]

Among the reasons for the preference of travel by water rather than by land, one was economy. In the case of tolls, for example, the case has been exactly reversed. As locks did not exist there were no river-dues; but of highway-tolls plenty; moreover, it often cost something to cross a bridge but never a sou to pass under it. As for ferries, the ferryman occasionally made the passengers pay what he pleased by collecting fares in the middle of the river. Yet another reason which raised the cost of road-travel as against river-travel lay in the latter affording far fewer chances to robbers, which also told on the direct expense by eliminating payments to escorts.

The contrast, of course, between horse and boat was much greater than between waggon and boat. In fact, the choice between the latter pair was many times a matter of comfort rather than of cost; the fares for both, in all normal cases but one where they can be exactly determined, varying from three farthings to a penny ha'penny a mile. To compare this with existing railway fares we may strike an average and say sixpence a mile; but the charges will be found to approach the minimum more often on the river than in the waggon. A typical instance is the five stivers [2s. 6d.] on the nine-mile canal between Haarlem and Amsterdam, and the lowest, the exception just spoken of, is the sixteen soldi [3s. 6d.] for the twenty-four miles by river and lagoon between Venice and Padua, recorded by Villamont in 1591, and by Van Buchell in 1587. One disadvantage common to both cart and boat must not be forgotten—that, to profit by this relative cheapness, the traveller had to form one of a party; if no party was ready he had to wait till one collected. Sir Henry Wotton, to take one example out of many, once wanted to go by waggon from Brunswick to Frankfort, about one hundred and fifty miles; had he started on the spot he would have started alone and paid at the rate of 4s. 6d. a mile of our money. He waited a week before two disreputable specimens turned up to share the expense.

This freedom to choose one's company was a decided advantage for the traveller who rode, considering that murdering was far less exclusively a lower-class habit than it has since become. But he had to pay dearly for the increased respectability and pace. Horse-hire varied from a penny ha'penny to fivepence a mile, the maximum charge representing the cost of post-horses in France in the seventeenth century, the minimum the charge in Italy for a horse that was waiting for a return fare, an opportunity that might frequently be met with. The average was far nearer the maximum than the minimum rate, since it was often a case of post-horse or no horse, and post rates did not sink so very far below the French standard. According to Moryson, the English charged two shillings a day in London, one shilling a day in the provinces, for other than post-horses, but he was a native and the charges to foreigners probably exceeded the charges to natives throughout Europe in a greater degree then than now; an Englishman on the way from Calais to Paris complains that he had to pay £2 15s. where a Frenchman paid but three pistoles at sixteen shillings and eightpence each;[130] and that is not an isolated grievance. In fact, as a comment on Moryson's remark about England, when Lionello, a secretary of the Venetian ambassador, went post to Edinburgh and back in June, 1617, besides paying threepence a mile for each horse, he includes in his accounts as usual tips fourpence to the woman and sixpence to the horse-boy, at each stage.[131] In Italy, where several foreigners found the cost of riding less than the average, Villamont reckons that an écu [two guineas] a day per horse covered all horse-charges, while in passing from Germany to Italy the best plan was to buy a horse in Germany, where three pounds would be a fair price, and sell it in Italy, which could be done at double that price.

Travellers' evidence, however, as to horse-charges is less plentiful than might be expected, owing to what may be called the 'vetturino' system. The term 'vetturino' came to be applied, even outside Italy, to the horse-owner or carrier who contracted for the whole cost of a journey, food, lodging, transport, tolls. Their reputation is best illustrated by the tale of an abbé at Loreto about this time, who, in confessing, included among his transgressions a beating inflicted on a 'vetturino.' "Go on," said the confessor, "that doesn't count; they're the worst scoundrels in the world." Nevertheless, the method spread all over Europe during this period with striking rapidity, though far more readily on the road than on the water. The advantages to the stranger were recognised at once, the saving of the trouble and the expense which accompanied repeated bargaining in a state of ignorance as to where and how to do it, what inns to go to, what extras to put up with, what the legal dues really were, etc. However dishonest the 'vetturino' might prove, his victim probably paid no more to him in unintentional commission than his accomplices would have extorted on their own account otherwise. For the Lyons-Turin journey, at least, there soon came into use a regular formula for a written contract, a formula which has been preserved.[132] The system has its value for us, too, in enabling us to compare prices. While there are multitudes of figures apparently available for the purpose of reckoning cost, a large majority turn out to be, to use one of their own phrases, no more use than a wooden poker, the writer omitting one or more of the necessary data. If, for instance, he mentions the hire of four horses, it leaves us in the dark in reckoning personal expenses, inasmuch as four horses may equally well imply two, or three, or four persons. So likewise, to complete an account of a waggon-fare, it needs to be stated whether or no it was what the Germans called "maul frei," that is, whether the coachman paid for his own food or not. Or again, riding was so much the rule that the charge which the wayfarer gives for bed and breakfast often includes, probably more often than not, the "stabulum et pabulum" for his horse; it is only on the rare occasions when specific statement is made, or when a pedestrian gives prices, that there is any certainty about it. Now the vetturino's charge does away with all this uncertainty. Also as to whether a guide accompanied the party or not—another necessary which cost money; especially a satisfactory one, obtainable only, writes Sir Philip Sidney, "by much expense or much humbleness."

Here again the traveller by waggon went more cheaply than the horseman. What with the absence of sign-posts, the scarcity of persons to ask, the frequent indistinguishableness of the road from its margin and its surroundings, a stranger was practically forced to be guided. In 1648 this brought the cost of a journey from London to Dover to £1 15s. 10d.[133] [say, £8]. In a town this applied to every one who had no friends there. Every single feature on which one depends nowadays was absent, or, if present, present only in embryo,—visible street-names, printed suggestions other than historical, detailed plans, the wide, straight streets which allow the mystified to discover his whereabouts without climbing a church-tower. In short, what was worth seeing was mostly heard of only by word of mouth, and to find it one needed to be led there. Expenditure on guides reached its highest point when the Alps were snowbound; after a heavy fall he who wished to pass must wait till others had made fresh tracks or pay anything up to fifty crowns [£75] to have it done for him.

To pass Mont Cenis cost in the ordinary way the equivalent of about £4 10s.; that is, about half what the 'vetturino' would want to take each one of several from Lyons to Turin—six crowns, which latter sum is about ten times as much as the second-class fare to-day. But then the journey takes twelve hours now and took seven days then, with food all the while at travellers' prices.

The length of journeys stands out as the chief factor in the comparative costliness. Take a typical case, that of the five middle-class men[134] who left Venice on February 20, 1655, who wasted no time on the way, reached England on March 29, and spent one hundred and twenty-five pounds. Reckoning this as equalling £625, this works out as the equivalent of £125 each for thirty-seven days, or £3 7s. 7d. a day. If a man left Venice now on February 20, he might break the journey at Bâle, to do things comfortably, and arrive in London at 5.38 A. M. on February 22. Second-class fare would be £5 10s. 7d.; add £2 for meals and incidentals, £7 10s. 7d. in all, an average of £3 3s. a day. The other thirty-four and a half days of the thirty-seven his food would be paid for at home rates, say 2s. 6d. a day, £4 6s. 3d., which, added to the £7 10s. 7d., gives £11 16s. 10d. Now the daily average of about 7s. higher in the cost of travel apart from food, as above represented,—mainly accounted for by the relative cost of horses and guides as against railway fares,—only comes to £13 in thirty-seven days. On this basis the journey from Venice to London two hundred and fifty years ago cost between nine and ten times as much as it would to-day, solely on account of the difference in speed. That the expenditure of these five middle-class men was very reasonable is easily verifiable, as, for example, by the accounts of Muscorno,[135] another Venetian secretary, whose bill for coming to England, for himself and a servant, comes to three hundred and two ducats [£385]. If there was one place where travelling ought to have worked out relatively cheaply, it was Muscovy, seeing that on the sledges a peasant would take a passenger fifty leagues for three or four crowns; but it does not seem to have lowered the expenses of one Dr. Willes, whose overland journey thither in 1600 cost eighty pounds, including payments to guides. His own share may be reckoned as equivalent to two hundred and forty pounds as compared with the fifteen pounds the same route would cost to-day.

Luggage would frequently entail the same fare as the owner, since an extra horse would be needed to carry a box. Leather trunks were to be purchased which might be carried in front of the rider, but these did not protect the contents against rain. As to what carriers took as free luggage and what as "excess," there is no evidence but that of one Englishman[136] who found he was entitled to five pounds free on the Calais-Paris road and paid ten shillings surcharge on the rest without comment. Any advice the experienced have to offer as regards reduction of luggage for economy is in view far less of carriage than of customs-duties. In Italy the exactions were severest; almost every day's journey would take one over some boundary and at every bridge there were two or three quattrini [twopence] to pay; at every gate six or eight soldi [one shilling], besides baggage dues. Any article carried through Italy would cost its price over again in dues; a sword, for instance, you had to give up at the gate, pay a man to carry it to the inn, where the host took care of it till your departure, when you had to pay again for its carriage to the gate. The Papal states had the lowest scale of charges, yet on crossing their boundary, there was a giulio [3s. 6d.] to pay for the smallest hand-bag; and at Florence even your corpse would be taxed a crown [£1 10s.] if it went in or out of the city for burial. In Germany, where the burden was lighter, Sir Thomas Hoby, coming down the Rhine in 1555, paid toll at twenty-one custom-houses between Mainz and Herzogensbosch to fourteen authorities. As a rule, too, the taxes were farmed, which increased the tourists' sufferings from them, inasmuch as they were exacted with greater rigour and it was the harder to get redress in cases of extortion, especially when, as in Poland and Spain, the 'farmers' were Jews or of Jewish blood. Bribery, however, was often practicable, and where practicable, economical; one of the best guides to Spain repeats concerning every custom-house that the traveller should say he has nothing to declare and tip the officials only if they take his word, that is, if they do not do their duty. It is true there were passes to be obtained from a central authority, overriding the right of search, such as the imperial pass in Germany, and the indefinite rights of ambassadors, but how far these were respected seems to have been mainly a matter of bluff. Navagero, in Spain early in the sixteenth century, ambassador though he was, had to pay duties even on the rings on his fingers.

Passports, for one purpose or another, may be said to have been as much the rule then as they have since become the exception; an Englishman must pay five shillings for leave to travel and another five shillings if he wished to take his horse with him. A Frenchman at Milan speaks of getting a passport, stating his destination and the colour of his hair; and so on. But few mention such expenses being entailed as does one Italian,[137] leaving Dover in 1606. Apparently he had to pay for separate passports for each of his suite as well as himself, as these cost forty reals. The "real of eight" was nearly equal to five shillings English. The captain of the vessel demanded copies which "cost very dear" and the harbour-keeper, furthermore, who had exacted two giuli [six shillings], (each person?) on arrival, required double at departure.

Guide-books seem to have been from two to four times the price of Baedekers, a minor item, but considerable, like food and lodging. It may seem, at first sight, as if food and lodging were far from minor items, and that truly, of course, if only the total expenditure is considered. But in considering, as is being done here, relative cost only, that is, the cost of travel in so far as it has altered since three centuries ago, it has to be borne in mind that the average cost of food and shelter never alters; it is only standards of living that alter. If any one took the average price of meals, say, in Europe then and average prices now, and showed a difference of net cost between them, his calculations must either be based on misleading information, or else would prove that the figure he was multiplying with to equate values was a wrong one. This, of course, refers to necessaries; luxuries must be ruled out for two reasons: first, all attempts to fix a standard or strike an average breaks down for lack of a basis; second, they do not test what any one is called upon to spend but only how much he can spend if he is fool enough to try. Thus, for example, when Montaigne tells us that the charges at the "Vaso d'Oro" at Rome would be about twenty crowns [£35] a month, we may conclude that if we ascertain what the average charges would be for the same accommodation at a first-rate hotel to-day, it is a more reasonable plan to take the difference as the difference between their money-values and ours than to accept a surplus in either, according to the usually accepted multiplying figure, as defining an increase or decrease in hotel charges.

Yet for all this, something remains to be said. A modern tourist often finds himself in the position of drawing his income from a locality where money is cheaper or dearer than in the districts where he is making his payments. Now, three hundred years ago, he would have met with these fluctuations more frequently and more suddenly than would be the case to-day; and when met with, they would often have been more violent. In so far as this was the case, so far is the relative cost affected. The causes of these fluctuations may be divided into (1) local custom, (2) insufficient linking-up of supply and demand. Hungary may be taken as an example of the latter, Germany of the former, cause; Poland and Spain of districts where social and economic forces jib at separate classification. In Hungary and the districts southeast of it the most seasoned traveller never failed to be astonished at the ideal natural conditions; "wheat," as Sir Thomas Browne's son said of Transylvania in particular a little later, "had no value in relation to the subsistence of a human being." There was no outlet for its products; the continual state of war kept commerce paralysed; Vienna had little need of it, Constantinople none at all; what the fertility of the soil produced so abundantly was thus available for local consumption only. Especially was this the case with products that needed no human tending; the man who ate a whole penn'orth of fish risked bursting. In Germany prices ruled low, yet so excessive was the drunkenness, and so general, that it was a moral impossibility to live cheaply without cutting one's self off from human society. Supper over, for instance, the "schlafftrinke" was set on the table, and whoever touched a drop of it had, by custom, to pay an even share with those who drank till morning.

The Spanish diet, which was such a trial to the inside if the stranger did conform to it, was equally a trial to his pocket if he did not. One tried both ways on one day in 1670.[138] At noon he shared the landlord's dinner, paying a real [2s. 6d.] for vegetables, dried fish, fruit; but when in the evening he was one of six who dined on four fowls and neck of mutton, his bill came to the equivalent of £1 5s. not including wine. Poland, on the contrary, being the granary of Europe and exporting much else besides grain, rich in serf labour, and with its retail trade in the hands of denationalised aliens who were well under control, could afford to import plenty of luxuries and enjoyed abundance of necessaries: a goose or a pig for the equivalent of 1s. 6d., a loin of mutton for 1s.—such were prices in Poland.

A good test of relative cheapness is the value of the coin most generally useful; in Poland these were the brass 'banns,' worth about a penny farthing in to-day's values. Of Italy a similar statement may be made; of England just the contrary. And this presence, or absence, of plenty of small coins affects the tourist in two ways; partly in relation to his food, because the more common small change is, the more commonly customary is it to sell food in quantities suited to a single meal for one; secondly, the smaller the change, the smaller the tips. Before leaving the subject of food, an example may be quoted of the violence of the fluctuations in prices at that date when the means of carriage and of making wants known in time were so crude. Sir Henry Wotton writes, of his own knowledge, that the price of victuals at Venice was three times as high in 1608 as it had been in 1604.

Lastly, as regards necessary expenditure, what did their money itself cost them?

To begin with, the far greater length of time usually necessary then to prove identity, or to confirm references, must not be lost sight of, seeing how much it added to the seriousness of the hope deferred that maketh the pocket empty.

Next, to deal with the ways of remedying this—there were three ways, (1) Carrying cash; (2) depositing money with a merchant, or a friend, who either remits coins or advises an amount; (3) letters of credit.

Carrying cash meant carrying coins. At any rate, not one of these travellers mentions using the bank-notes of the day, the 'segni reppresentativi' just introduced by the Italian bankers, nor even the ancient semi-currency of jewels, unless one includes Henri III, who, when escaping from the throne of Poland to that of France, carried off three hundred thousand crowns' worth. Carrying coins for future use meant, in the ordinary way, sewing them up in one's clothes. The favourite place was inside a waistband of the breeches, a double one designed for that purpose, made of leather or canvas, forming a series of little pockets, all closed by pulling one string. It was so that Lithgow was carrying one hundred and thirty-seven double pieces of gold [probably double pistoles, equal to £500], when he and the gold were seized by the Inquisition at Malaga. Next to the waistband, under the arm-pits was the most usual spot; but it is given as advisable to use one's shabbiest garments in any case for this purpose, as the least likely to be searched thoroughly by robbers. In Muscovy the boots were more often used than other articles. A small reserve might be wrapped round with mending-material, with needles sticking into it to add to the innocence of its appearance; or it might be hidden at the bottom of a pot of ointment. By this latter means Moryson saved himself from utter destitution when robbed, having chosen ointment which smelt, apparently, like the Muscovite's fish. Equally ingenious and successful was another who smuggled all his money past the Mohammedan customs by hiding it in pork. Mohammedans themselves used their turbans.