re
no longer the mysterious beings of the night before. A departure is much
less romantic than an unexplained arrival in the golden evening.
Although we might be greatly taken at a ghost's first appearance, we
should behold him vanish with comparative equanimity.

The good folk of the inn at Pont, when we called there for the bags,
were overcome with marveling. At sight of these two dainty little
boats, with a fluttering Union Jack on each, and all the varnish shining
from the sponge, they began to perceive that they had entertained angels
unawares. The landlady stood upon the bridge, probably lamenting she had
charged so little; the son ran to and fro, and called out the neighbours
to enjoy the sight; and we paddled away from quite a crowd of rapt
observers. These gentlemen pedlars, indeed! Now you see their quality
too late.

The whole day was showery, with occasional drenching plumps. We were
soaked to the skin, then partially dried in the sun, then soaked once
more. But there were some calm intervals, and one notably, when we were
skirting the forest of Mormal, a sinister name to the ear, but a place
most gratifying to sight and smell. It looked solemn along the
riverside, drooping its boughs into the water, and piling them up aloft
into a wall of leaves. What is a forest but a city of nature's own, full
of hardy and innocuous living things, where there is nothing dead and
nothing made with the hands, but the citizens themselves are the houses
and public monuments? There is nothing so much alive, and yet so quiet,
as a woodland; and a pair of people, swinging past in canoes, feel very
small and bustling by comparison.

And surely of all smells in the world, the smell of many trees is the
sweetest and most fortifying. The sea has a rude, pistolling sort of
odour, that takes you in the nostrils like snuff, and carries with it a
fine sentiment of open water and tall ships; but the smell of a forest,
which comes nearest to this in tonic quality, surpasses it by many
degrees in the quality of softness. Again, the smell of the sea has
little variety, but the smell of a forest is infinitely changeful; it
varies with the hour of the day, not in strength merely, but in
character; and the different sorts of trees, as you go from one zone of
the wood to another, seem to live among different kinds of atmosphere.
Usually the resin of the fir predominates. But some woods are more
coquettish in their habits; and the breath of t