the range of stay-at-home humours. A good breeze rustled and

shivered in the rows of trees that bordered the canal. The leaves

flickered in and out of the light in tumultuous masses. It seemed

sailing weather to eye and ear; but down between the banks, the

wind reached us only in faint and desultory puffs. There was

hardly enough to steer by. Progress was intermittent and

unsatisfactory. A jocular person, of marine antecedents, hailed us

from the tow-path with a 'C'est vite, mais c'est long.'

The canal was busy enough. Every now and then we met or overtook a

long string of boats, with great green tillers; high sterns with a

window on either side of the rudder, and perhaps a jug or a flower-

pot in one of the windows; a dinghy following behind; a woman

busied about the day's dinner, and a handful of children. These

barges were all tied one behind the other with tow ropes, to the

number of twenty-five or thirty; and the line was headed and kept

in motion by a steamer of strange construction. It had neither

paddle-wheel nor screw; but by some gear not rightly comprehensible

to the unmechanical mind, it fetched up over its bow a small bright

chain which lay along the bottom of the canal, and paying it out

again over the stern, dragged itself forward, link by link, with

its whole retinue of loaded skows. Until one had found out the key

to the enigma, there was something solemn and uncomfortable in the

progress of one of these trains, as it moved gently along the water

with nothing to mark its advance but an eddy alongside dying away

into the wake.

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