selves to a pitch of humility in the matter of weather not often
attained except in the Scottish Highlands. A rag of blue sky or a
glimpse of sunshine set our hearts singing; and when the rain was not
heavy, we counted the day almost fair.

Long lines of barges lay one after another along the canal, many of them
looking mighty spruce and ship-shape in their jerkin of Archangel tar
picked out with white and green. Some carried gay iron railings, and
quite a parterre of flower-pots. Children played on the decks, as
heedless of the rain as if they had been brought up on Loch Carron side;
men fished over the gunwale, some of them under umbrellas; women did
their washing; and every barge boasted its mongrel cur by way of
watch-dog. Each one barked furiously at the canoes, running alongside
until he had got to the end of his own ship, and so passing on the word
to the dog aboard the next. We must have seen something like a hundred
of these embarkations in the course of that day's paddle, ranged one
after another like the houses in a street; and from not one of them were
we disappointed of this accompaniment. It was like visiting a menagerie,
the _Cigarette_ remarked.

These little cities by the canal side had a very odd effect upon the
mind. They seemed, with their flower-pots and smoking chimneys, their
washings and dinners, a rooted piece of nature in the scene; and yet if
only the canal below were to open, one junk after another would hoist
sail or harness horses and swim away into all parts of France; and the
impromptu hamlet would separate, house by house, to the four winds. The
children who played together to-day by the Sambre and Oise Canal, each
at his own father's threshold, when and where might they next meet?

For some time past the subject of barges had occupied a great deal of
our talk, and we had projected an old age on the canals of Europe. It
was to be the most leisurely of progresses, now on a swift river at the
tail of a steam-boat, now waiting horses for days together on some
inconsiderable junction. We should be seen pottering on deck in all the
dignity of years, our white beards falling into our laps. We were ever
to be busied among paint-pots; so that there should be no white fresher,
and no green more emerald than ours, in all the navy of the canals.
There should be books in the cabin, and tobacco-jars, and some old
Burgundy as red as a November sunset and as odorous as a violet in
April. There should