sentences:  In the United States, they travelled on pleasure steamers on the country's great rivers.In the early days, the musicians went to neighbouring countries such as France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Switzerland.After the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871), they no longer went to France, though, a country still seething at the loss of the war, and of a sizeable piece of territory, Alsace-Lorraine, to the newly minted German Empire.