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Madalyn Williams
Mrs. Peters
United States History 2
September 30, 2013
That Was Then, This is Now: Activit de la Seine
Ah, France. Ah, Paris. Ah, La Seine. "Voil Paris!" (McCullough 25). 'Lights on the
river'. This was the destination of the Americans, who arrived upon the river utopia. They came
across the lifeline of the city where so many arrived to die. Death, the most striking activity
about the Seine, but there was much more as too and fro upon the river. Back then, it was a
major thoroughfare and a beauteous sight, as Holmes witnessed: "[He loved] to walk by the
Seine, where he felt closest to the essence of Paris. Just to stand on the Pont Neuf and gaze at the
river, its passing boats and barges, was, he said, all the occupation one could ask for in an idle
hour" (McCullough 121). Still today, it is a stunning sight, but in the bump and buzz of the
modern era, its extravagance is less simple and clear to the naked eye. It is still a major mode of
transportation, however, those vessels which grace it have evolved. And all that surrounds the
Seine's banks has advanced, up. Nowadays bodies tend to stay away from the bottoms of the
river, opposed to olden, cloudy days when: "Or for those with the stomach for it, there was
another popular attraction of which no mention was to be found in Galignani's Guide. At the
Paris morgue on the le-de-la-Cit unidentified bodies taken from the Seine were regularly put on
public display. Most of the bodies had been caught in a net stretched across the river for that
purpose downstream at Saint-Cloud. Some were murder victims, but the great majority were
suicides. Stripped of their clothes, they lay stretched out on black marble tables, on the chance
someone might claim them. Otherwise, after three days, they were sold to doctors for ten francs

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each. Crowds of people came to see. As Sanderson noted, 'You can stop in on your way as you
go to the flower market, which is just opposite" (McCullough 46-7). Seeing as the Seine is a
stationary river, of the earth, little has changed in is physicality or location. It is that which
embraces it that has changed. But in essence, its culture has not altered. It is in Paris, after all.
"As one learned in Victor Hugo's book, the shoreline of the Seine was its first city wall, the river
was its first moat" (McCullough 40). From the beginning, the Seine has defined the progress of
its surrounding inhabitants. Now the French make use of it as they wish, but it is the River that
leads them into the future, and if they are careful, they will ride on its ripples rather than sink.

Works Cited

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McCullough, David. The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris. 1st ed. New York: Simon &
Schuster, 2011. Print.
Columbia University, Press. "Paris, City, France." Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6Th
Edition (2013): 1-3. History Reference Center. Web. 29 Sept. 2013.