rovisions, our gasoline and oil, our
river charts, our wraps and ourselves all stowed comfortably away in
the eight metres of length of our little boat. Our siren gave a hoot
which startled the rooks circling about the donjon walls of Chateau
Gaillard over our heads, and we passed under the brick arches of the
bridge for a twelve-mile run to the first lock at Courcelles.

The process of going through a river lock in France is not far
different from the same process elsewhere, except that the
all-powerful Touring Club de France has secured precedence for all
pleasure boats over any other waiting craft. It really costs nothing,
but you give a franc to the _eclusier_, and the way is thereby made
the easier for the next arrival. The objection to river-locks is
their frequency in some parts. There is one stretch of thirty or
forty kilometres on the Marne with thirty-three locks. That costs
something, truly.

We knew the Seine valley intimately, by road along both its banks, at
any rate, and we were hopeful of reaching Triel that night, near the
junction of the Seine and Oise.

We passed our first lock at Courcelles, just before seven o'clock,
and had a good stretch of straight water ahead of us before Vernon
was reached.

You cannot miss your way, of course, when travelling by river, but
you can be at a considerable loss to know how far you have come since
your last stopping-place, or rather you would be if the French
government had not placed little white kilometre stones all along the
banks of the "_navigable_" and "_flottable_" rivers, as they have
along the great national roads on land. Blessed be the paternal
French government; the traveller in _la belle France_ has much for
which to be grateful to it: its excellent roadways, its sign-boards,
and its kilometre stones most of all. The motor-boat is highly
developed in France from the simple fact that you can tour on it. You
can go all over France by a magnificent system of inland waterways;
from the Seine to the Marne; from the Oise to the Sambre--and so to
Antwerp and Ghent; from the Loire to the Rhone; and even from the
Marne to the Rhine; and from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic.
France is the touring-ground par excellence for the automobile boat.

Here's a new project of travel for those who want to do what others
have not done to any great extent. Africa and the Antartic continent
have been explored, and the North Pole bids fair to be discovered by
means of