“At noon we started for Cologne, and hot indeed it was, thermometer 98 degrees in the shade… We were supported in our agonies, however, in the following manner.– At one little station [near Liège] where we were to stop but a moment, the Captain espied an Estaminet in the road outside the rail. He burst open the carriage door, rushed to the Estaminet, seized two small bottles of beer that were standing with a lot of others in a tub of ice, flung down a franc, and rejoined his companions. Seeing the beams of joy on their countenance, he determined, before entering the carriage on a second foray, and amid shouts of “Monsieur! Monsieur! prenez garde c’est dangereux,” dittoed his exploit, and was well rewarded by the unfeigned gratulations of his dust-choked friends. Was ever a glass of ale so delicious as this? No had ever tasted anything to equal it.”
From How We Did Them in Seventeen Days: Belgium, the Rhine, Switzerland & France, by ‘Edmund, George and Harry’, 1873, from the Morrab Library collection, Penzance.