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CHAPTER 6 73iodiversity ,(gst ~ Rhine made a cameo appearance in Mary Shelley's Gothic tale, -.1 ;:ankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus, published in 1818. Dashing from Switzerland to Britain with a desperate scheme to create a bride for his monster, Victor Frankenstein decided to sail down the Rhine to Rotterdam and from there catch a sea vessel to London. His route, unfortunately , was anything but speedy. He consumed a full five days sailing from Strasbourg to Mainz, including an idle day in Mannheim. He got sidetracked again in Mainz, an obligatory resting spot for all real and would-be Romantics ("This part of the Rhine, indeed, presents a singularly variegated landscape," wrote Shelley in Radcliffe-like rapture. "In one spot you view rugged hills, ruined castles overlooking tremendous precipices, with the dark Rhine rushing beneath; and, on the sudden turn ofa promontory, flourishing vineyards, with green sloping banks, and a meandering river, and populous towns, occupy the scene"). Contrary winds and a sluggish current finally convinced him to abandon the Rhine altogether at Cologne, and he took a land route to Rotterdam instead. So slow was Frankenstein's progress that his monster was able to shadow him on foot. "I left Switzerland with you," the monster exclaimed when they met again in Britain. "I crept along the shores of the Rhine, among its willow islands, and over the summits of its hills." I Had Frankenstein attempted the same route a few decades later, he would have found it a much quicker and more pleasant journey (and his monster would have found fewer willows and islands to hide amidst). The Netherlands Steamboat Company began regular passenger service between Rotterdam and Cologne in 1825. Two years later, the Prussian Steamboat Company (predecessor to the now ubiquitous Koln-Diisseldorfer) started serving the Middle Rhine from Cologne to Mainz.2 The Prussian firm 145 BIODIVERSITY LOST alone carried 18,000 passengers in its inaugural year, fully half of whom were British subjects in search of a Romantic holiday. The number of passengers surged to 685,000 in 1847,1.1 million in 1867, and 1.9 million in 1913, despite competition from a dozen other steamer lines.3 Railroads, meanwhile, began to provide tourists with an additional mode of transportation, especially on the Upper Rhine where travel by ship remained unpredictable and precarious well into the twentieth century . The most important were the Alsatian Line from Basel to Strasbourg (1841), the Main-Neckar Line from Heidelberg to Frankfurt (1846), and the Baden Line from Basel to Mannheim (1849). By 1860 most of the left bank was lined with train tracks, and by 1870 most of the right bank as well. Cycling tours began on the Rhine in 1902, once the old towpaths were converted into bike routes. For the well-to-do, automobile roads were added in 1909. Finding the best tourist sites and most comfortable hotels also became easier. Whereas Shelley had to rely on the impressions ofRadcliffe and other Romantics, visitors after 1828 could turn to ]. A. Klein's pathbreaking guidebook, A Trip on the Rhinefrom Mainz to Cologne, aptly subtitled ''A Handbook for Speedy Travelers." Renamed the Baedeker Guide in 1849, it has been the mainstay of Rhine tourists ever since.4 The ever-quickening pace of travel would have astonished the Congress of Vienna diplomats. Nobody could have foreseen in 1815 that the Rhine would one day be overrun with roads, bridges, rail lines, bike paths, hotels, restaurants, and camera-toting tourists. Yet the diplomats would have been equally astonished at the monstrous disfigurement of the riverbed and the denuding of its alluvial forests. In 1815, the river was full of islands and braids, its banks a continuous corridor oflowland forests and meadows. Its catchment area supported innumerable plant and animal species, its trees a vibrant bird population, its waters a cornucopia of fish. By 1975, the Rhine had lost most of its forests and floodplain; it supported only a tiny fraction of its original flora and fauna; and it had earned the nickname "Europe's romantic sewer" and "Europe's sewage dump." One hundred fifty years of hydraulic tinkering had turned the Rhine into a soulless shadow of its former self Once clean, it was now filthy; once broad, it was now narrow; once bursting with life, it was now half-dead. Water Pollution Researchers rely on two different but related methods for measuring the quality of a river's water: biological analysis and nonbiological analysis. 146 [18.223...

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