[fragment]
Heidelberg,
Sunday night
11th Octr 1846
I have got on a good way since I wrote to you last, & have become quite well again. I have not yet received any letters since I left England; but expect to find a collection of them next week on my return to Coblenz, having desired the Ghent postmaster to forward them thither.
I have made no pictures until today, when I made one (having the paper ready in the paper holder) out of my inn window, with what result remains to be seen since when I intended to bring it out this evening, all the glass stoppers in my bottles were found to be immoveable fixtures, so that the operations were necessarily abandoned until tomorrow –
I slept one night at Brussels tho’ out of my way, in order to look at the architecture of the Hotel de Ville. Next evening I arrived at Liege by the railroad during one of the heaviest pours of rain I ever saw, and as the station has no covering everybody got a wetting, and being a dark night also there was a dismal confusion. Not knowing the name of any hotel I trusted the driver of the fiacre <1> to drive me to one, and he chose to take me to a third rate one (where however the people were very civil & seemed rather surprised to see a stranger arrive) This was called the Hotel de Bellevue, but since it does not possess the smallest view of any kind, being in a very narrow street, the people [illegible deletion] judiciously alter’d the name to Hotel de Flandre, in the bill they gave me next day. The next day I went to Cologne by a slow and tiresome railway that only does 10 miles an hour – The distance is equal to that from London to Swindon, but we were near 7 hours & a half about it. The engineering difficulties in constructing this line are said to have been immense, but one rather wished they had been insuperable, for in that case one might have gone on in the old fashioned way with post horses with more satisfaction – In the evening I proceeded to Bonn by a very good
[letter incomplete]
Notes:
1. A hackney-cab.