et influences of lakes
George and Champlain, is indeed monotonous. But to follow connecting
watercourses it was necessary for the Mayeta to traverse the Champlain
Canal (sixty-four) and the Erie Canal (six miles) from Whitehall to
Albany on the Hudson River, a total distance of seventy miles.

There was nothing of sufficient interest in the passage of the canal to
be worthy of record save the giving way of a lock-gate, near Troy, and
the precipitating of a canal-boat into the vortex of waters that
followed. By this accident my boat was detained one day on the banks of
the canal. On the fourth day the Mayeta ended her services by arriving
at Albany, where, after a journey of four hundred miles, experience had
taught me that I could travel more quickly in a lighter boat, and more
conveniently and economically without a companion. It was now about the
first week in August, and the delay which would attend the building of a
new boat especially adapted for the journey of two thousand miles yet to
be travelled would not be lost, as by waiting a few weeks, time would be
given for the malaria on the rivers of New Jersey, Delaware, and
Maryland, and even farther south, to be eradicated by the fall frosts.
David returned to his New Jersey home a happy man, invested with the
importance which attaches itself to a great traveller. I had
unfortunately contributed to Mr. Bodfish's thirst for the marvellous by
reading to him at night, in our lonely camp, Jules Verne's imaginative
"Journey to the Centre of the Earth." David was in ecstasies over this
wonderful contribution to fiction. He preferred fiction to truth at any
time. Once, while reading to him a chapter of the above work, his
credulity was so challenged that he became excited, and broke forth
with, "Say, boss, how do these big book-men larn to lie so well? does it
come nat'ral to them, or is it got by edication?" I have since heard
that when Mr. Bodfish arrived in the pine-wood regions of New Jersey he
related to his friends his adventures "in furrin parts," as he styled
the Dominion of Canada, and so interlaced the _facts_ of the cruise of
the Mayeta with the _fancies_ of the "Journey to the Centre of the
Earth," that to his neighbors the region of the St. Lawrence has become
a country of awful and mysterious associations, while the more knowing
members of the community which David honors with his presence are firmly
convinced that there never existed such a boat as the Mayeta