Bourrienne's Anecdote

To the left of the short road leading from Altona to Hamburg there lies a field that had been excavated in order to get gravel for building houses and roads. The intention was to repair the broad and long street in Hamburg running to the Altona gate. During the night the hole from which the gravel had been taken was filled up; and the same carts which as a rule conveyed the gravel to Hamburg were filled with raw sugar, the colour of which resembles sand. They contented them-selves with covering the sugar with a layer of sand an inch thick. The pikes of the customs officials easily penetrated this thin layer of sand and the sugar underneath it. This comedy went on for a long time, but the work on the street made no progress. Before I knew the cause of this slowness I complained about it, because the street led out to a little country place which I owned near Altona, and where I used to go daily. Like myself, the customs officials at last found out that the work of road-making took rather a long time, and one fine day the sugar carts were stopped and seized. The smugglers then had to devise some other expedients.

In the region between Hamburg and Altona, on the right bank of the Elbe, there is a little suburb inhabited by sailors, dock-labourers, and a very large number of house-owners, whose burial ground is in the churchyard of Hamburg. One now saw more often than usual hearses with their adornments and decorations, processions, burial hymns and the usual ceremonies. Amazed at the enormous and sudden mortality among the inhabitants of Hamburgerberg, the customs house officials at length ventured to examine one of the deceased at close quarters and discovered sugar, coffee, vanilla, indigo, &c. This, accordingly, was another expedient which had to be abandoned; but others remained.