Chapter XV

Meaux on the Marne--Hammering--Popish forms--Wise dogs--Blocked
in a tunnel--A dry voyage--Arbour and garret--Odd
fellows--Dream on the Seine--Almost over--No
admittance--Charing-cross.

There are three hemispheres of scenery visible to the traveller who voyages thus in a boat on the rivers. First, the great arch of sky, and land, and trees, and flowers down to the water's brink; then the whole of this reflected beautifully in the surface of the river; and then the wondrous depths in the water itself, with its animal life, its rocks and glades below, and its flowers and mosses. Now rises the moon so clear, and with the sky around it so black that no "man in the moon" can be seen.

At the hotel we find a whole party of guests for the marriage-dinner of a newly-wedded pair. The younger portion of the company adjourn to the garden and let off squibs and crackers, so it seems to be a good time to exhibit some of my signal lights from my bedroom-window, and there is much cheering as the Englishman illumines the whole neighbourhood. Next day the same people all assembled for the marriage breakfast, and sherry, madeira, and champagne flowed from the well-squeezed purse of the bride's happy father.

I have noticed that the last sound to give way to the stillness of the night in a village is that of the blacksmith's hammer, which is much more heard abroad than at home. Perhaps this is because much of their execrable French ironwork is made in each town; whereas in England it is manufactured by machinery in great quantities and at special places. At any rate, after travelling on the Continent long enough to become calm and observant, seeing, hearing, and, we may add, scenting all around, the picture in the mind is full of blue dresses, white stones, jingling of bells, and the "cling, cling" of the never idle blacksmith.

This town of Meaux has a bridge with houses on it, and great mill-wheels filling up the arches as they used to do in old London-bridge. Pleasant gardens front the river, and cafés glitter there at night. These are not luxuries but positive necessaries of life for the Frenchman, and it is their absence abroad which--we believe--is one chief cause of his being so bad a colonist, for the Frenchman has only the expression "with me" for "home," and no word for "wife" but "woman."

The cathedral of Meaux is grand and old, and see how they masquerade the service in it! Look at the gaunt "Suisse," with his cocked-hat kept on in church, with his sword and spear. The twenty priests and twelve red-surpliced boys intone to about as many hearers. A monk escorted through the church makes believe to sprinkle holy water on all sides from that dirty plasterer's brush, and then two boys carry on their shoulders a huge round loaf, the "pain benit," which, after fifty bowings, is blessed, and escorted back to be cut up, and is then given in morsels to the congregation. These endless ceremonies are the meshes of the net of Popery, and they are well woven to catch many Frenchmen, who must have action, show, the visible tangible outside, whatever may be meant by it.

This service sets one a-thinking. Some form there must be in worship. One may suppose, indeed, that perfect spirit can adore God without attitude, or even any sequence or change. Yet in the Bible we hear of Seraphs veiling their bodies with their wings, and of elders prostrate at certain times, and saints that have a litany even in heaven. Mortals must have some form of adoration, but there is the question, How much? and on this great point how many wise and foolish men have written books without end, or scarcely any effect!

The riverside was a good place for a quiet Sunday walk. Here a flock of 300 sheep had come to drink, and nibble at the flowers hanging over the water, and the simple-hearted shepherd stood looking on while his dogs rushed backward and forward, yearning for some sheep to do wrong, that their dog service might be required to prevent or to punish naughty conduct. This "Berger" inquires whether England is near Africa, and how large our legs of mutton are, and if we have sheep-dogs, and are there any rivers in our island on the sea. Meanwhile at the hotel the marriage party kept on "breakfasting," even until four o'clock, and non-melodious songs were sung. The French, as a people, do not excel in vocal music, either in tone or in harmony, but then they are precise in time.

Afloat again next morning, and quite refreshed, we prepared for a long day's work. The stream was now clear, and the waving tresses of dark green weeds gracefully curved under water, while islands amid deep shady bays varied the landscape above.

I saw a canal lock open, and paddled in merely for variety, passing soon into a tunnel, in the middle of which there was a huge boat fixed, and nobody with it. The boat exactly filled the tunnel, and the men had gone to their dinner, so I had first to drag their huge boat out, and then the canoe proudly glided into daylight, having a whole tunnel to itself.

At Lagny, where we were to breakfast, I left my boat with a nice old gentleman, who was fishing in a nightcap and spectacles, and he assured me he would stop there two hours. But when I scrambled back to it through the mill (the miller's men amazed among their wholesome dusty sacks), the disconsolate Rob Roy was found to be all alone, the first time she had been left in a town an "unprotected female."

To escape a long serpent wind of the river, we entered another canal and found it about a foot deep, with clear water flowing pleasantly. This seemed to be very fortunate, and it was enjoyed most thoroughly for a few miles, little knowing what was to come. Presently weeds began, then clumps of great rushes, then large bushes and trees, all growing with thick grass in the water, and at length this got so dense that the prospect before me was precisely like a very large hayfield, with grass four feet high, all ready to be mowed, but which had to be mercilessly rowed through.

This on a hot day without wind, and in a long vista, unbroken by a man or a house, or anything lively, was rather daunting, but we had gone too far to recede with honour, and so by dint of pushing and working I actually got the boat through some miles of this novel obstruction (known only this summer), and brought her safe and sound again to the river. At one place there was a bridge over this wet marsh, and two men happened to be going over it as the canoe came near. They soon called to some neighbours, and the row of spectators exhibited the faculty so notable in French people and so rarely found with us, that of being able to keep from laughing right out at a foreigner in an awkward case. The absurd sight of a man paddling a boat amid miles of thick rushes was indeed a severe test of courteous gravity. However, I must say that the labour required to penetrate this marsh was far less than one would suppose from the appearance of the place. The sharp point of the boat entered, and its smooth sides followed through hedges, as it were, of aquatic plants, and, on the whole (and after all was done!), I preferred the trouble and muscular effort required then to that of the monotonous calm of usual canal sailing.

Fairly in the broad river again the Rob Roy came to Neuilly, and it was plain that my Sunday rest had enabled over thirty miles to be accomplished without any fatigue at the end. With some hesitation we selected an inn on the water-side. The canoe was taken up to it and put on a table in a summer-house, while my own bed was in a garret where one could not stand upright--the only occasion where I have been badly housed; and pray let no one be misled by the name of this abode--"The Jolly Rowers."

Next day the river flowed fast again, and numerous islands made the channels difficult to find. The worst of these difficulties is that you cannot prepare for them. No map gives any just idea of your route--the people on the river itself are profoundly ignorant of its navigation. For instance, in starting, my landlord told me that in two hours we should reach Paris. After ten miles an intelligent man said, "Distance from Paris? it is six hours from here;" while a third informed me a little further on, "It is just three leagues and a half from this spot."

The banks were now dotted with villas, and numerous pleasure-boats were moored at neat little stairs. The vast number of these boats quite astonished me, and the more so as very few of them were ever to be seen in actual use.

The French are certainly ingenious in their boat-making, but more of ingenuity than of practical exercise is seen on the water. On several rivers we remarked the "walking machine," in which a man can walk on the water by fixing two small boats on his feet. A curious mode of rowing with your face to the bows has lately been invented by a Frenchman, and it is described in the Appendix.

We stopped to breakfast at a new canal cutting, and as there were many _gamins_ about, I fastened a stone to my painter and took the boat out into the middle of the river, and so left her moored within sight of the arbour, where I sat, and also within sight of the ardent-eyed boys who gazed for hours with wistful looks on the tiny craft and its fluttering flag. Their desire to handle as well as to see is only natural for these little fellows, and, therefore, if the lads behave well, I always make a point of showing them the whole affair quite near, after they have had to abstain from it so long as a forbidden pleasure.

Strange that this quick curiosity of French boys does not ripen more of them into travellers, but it soon gets expended in trifling details of a narrow circle, while the sober, sedate, nay, the _triste_, Anglian is found scurrying over the world with a carpet-bag, and pushing his way in foreign crowds without one word of their language, and all the while as merry as a lark. Among the odd modes of locomotion adopted by Englishmen, we have already mentioned that of the gentleman travelling in Germany with a four-in-hand and two spare horses. We met another Briton who had made a tour in a road locomotive which he bought for 700_l._, and sold again at the same price. One more John Bull, who regarded the canoe as a "queer conveyance," went himself abroad on a velocipede. None of these, however, could cross seas, lakes, and rivers like the canoe, which might be taken wherever a man could walk or a plank could swim.

It seemed contrary to nature that, after thus nearing pretty Paris, one's back was now to be turned upon it for hours in order to have a wide, vague, purposeless voyage into country parts. But the river willed it so; for here a great curve began and led off to the left, while the traffic of the Marne went straight through a canal to the right,--through a canal, and therefore I would not follow it there.

The river got less and less in volume; its water was used for the canal, and it could scarcely trickle, with its maimed strength, through a spacious sweep of real country life. Here we often got grounded, got entangled in long mossy weeds, got fastened in overhanging trees, and, in fact, suffered all the evils which the smallest brook had ever entailed, though this was a mighty river.

The bend was more and more inexplicable, as it turned more round and round, till my face was full in the sunlight at noon, and I saw that the course was now due south.

Rustics were there to look at me, and wondering herdsmen too, as if the boat was in mid Germany, instead of being close to Paris. Evidently boating men in that quarter never came here by the river, and the Rob Roy was a _rara avis_ floating on a stream unused.

But the circle was rounded at last, as all circles are, however large they be; and we got back to the common route, to civilization, fishing men and fishing women, and on the broad Marne once more. So here I stopped a bit for a ponder.

And now we unmoor for the last time, and enter the Rob Roy for its final trip--the last few miles of the Marne, and of more than a thousand miles rowed and sailed since we started from England. I will not disguise my feeling of sadness then, and I wished that Paris was still another day distant.

For this journey in a canoe has been interesting, agreeable, and useful, though its incidents may not be realized by reading what has now been described. The sensation of novelty, freedom, health, and variety all day and every day was what cannot be recited. The close acquaintance with the people of strange lands, and the constant observation of nature around, and the unremitting attention necessary for progress, all combine to make a voyage of this sort improving to the mind thus kept alert, while the body thoroughly enjoys life when regular hard exercise in the open air dissipates the lethargy of these warmer climes.

These were my thoughts as I came to the Seine and found a cool bank to lie upon under the trees, with my boat gently rocking in the ripples of the stream below, and the nearer sound of a great city telling that Paris was at hand. "Here," said I, "and now is my last hour of life savage and free. Sunny days; alone, but not solitary; worked, but not weary"--as in a dream the things, places, and men I had seen floated before my eyes half closed. The panorama was wide, and fair to the mind's eye; but it had a tale always the same as it went quickly past--that vacation was over, and work must begin.

Up, then, for this is not a life of mere enjoyment. Again into the harness of "polite society," the hat, the collar, the braces, the gloves, the waistcoat, the latch-key--perhaps, the razor--certainly the umbrella. How every joint and limb will rebel against these manacles, but they must be endured!

The gradual approach to Paris by gliding down the Seine was altogether a new sensation. By diligence, railway, or steamer, you have nothing like it--not certainly by walking into Paris along a dusty road.

For now we are smoothly carried on a wide and winding river, with nothing to do but to look and to listen while the splendid panorama majestically unfolds. Villas thicken, gardens get smaller as houses are closer, trees get fewer as walls increase. Barges line the banks, commerce and its movement, luxury and its adornments, spires and cupolas grow out of the dim horizon, and then bridges seem to float towards me, and the hum of life gets deeper and busier, while the pretty little prattling of the river stream yields to the roar of traffic, and to that indescribable thrill which throbs in the air around this the capital of the Continent, the centre of the politics, the focus of the pleasure and the splendour of the world.

In passing the island at Notre Dame I fortunately took the proper side, but even then we found a very awkward rush of water under the bridges. This was caused by the extreme lowness of the river, which on this very day was three feet lower than in the memory of man. The fall over each barrier, though wide enough, was so shallow that I saw at the last bridge the crowd above me evidently calculated upon my being upset; and they were nearly right too. The absence of other boats showed me (now experienced in such omens) that some great difficulty was at hand, but I also remarked that by far the greater number of observers had collected over one particular arch, where at first there seemed to be the very worst chance for getting through. By logical deduction I argued, "that must be the best arch, after all, for they evidently expect I will try it," and, with a horrid presentiment that my first upset was to be at my last bridge, I boldly dashed forward--whirl, whirl the waves, and grate--grate--my iron keel; but the Rob Roy rises to the occasion, and a rewarding Bravo! from the Frenchmen above is answered by a British "All right" from the boat below.

No town was so hard to find a place for the canoe in as the bright, gay Paris. I went to the floating baths; they would not have me. We paddled to the funny old ship; they shook their heads. We tried a coal wharf; but they were only civil there. Even the worthy washerwomen, my quondam friends, were altogether callous now about a harbour for the canoe.

In desperation we paddled to a bath that was being repaired, but when my boat rounded the corner it was met by a volley of abuse from the proprietor for disturbing his fishing; he was just in the act of expecting the final bite of a _goujon_.

Relenting as we apologized and told the Rob Roy's tale, he housed her there for the night; and I shouldered my luggage and wended my way to an hotel.

Here is Meurice's, with the homeward tide of Britons from every Alp and cave of Europe flowing through its salons. Here are the gay streets, too white to be looked at in the sun, and the _poupeé_ theatres under the trees, and the dandies driving so stiff in hired carriages, and the dapper, little soldiers, and the gilded cafés.

Yes, it is Paris--and more brilliant than ever!

I faintly tried to hope, but--pray pardon me--I utterly failed to believe that any person there had enjoyed his summer months with such excessive delight as the captain, the purser, the ship's cook, and cabin boy of the Rob Roy canoe.

Eight francs take the boat by rail to Calais. Two shillings take her thence to Dover. The railway takes her free to Charing Cross, and there two porters put her in the Thames again.

A flowing tide, on a sunny evening, bears her fast and cheerily straight to Searle's, there to debark the Rob Roy's cargo safe and sound and thankful, and to plant once more upon the shore of old England

The flag that braved a thousand miles,
The rapid and the snag.