An Inland Voyage

by Robert Louis Stevenson
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

To equip so small a book with a preface is, I am half afraid, to
sin against proportion. But a preface is more than an author can

resist, for it is the reward of his labours. When the foundation
stone is laid, the architect appears with his plans, and struts for

an hour before the public eye. So with the writer in his preface:
he may have never a word to say, but he must show himself for a

moment in the portico, hat in hand, and with an urbane demeanour.
It is best, in such circumstances, to represent a delicate shade of

manner between humility and superiority: as if the book had been
written by some one else, and you had merely run over it and

inserted what was good. But for my part I have not yet learned the
trick to that perfection; I am not yet able to dissemble the warmth

of my sentiments towards a reader; and if I meet him on the
threshold, it is to invite him in with country cordiality.

To say truth, I had no sooner finished reading this little book in
proof, than I was seized upon by a distressing apprehension. It

occurred to me that I might not only be the first to read these
pages, but the last as well; that I might have pioneered this very

smiling tract of country all in vain, and find not a soul to follow
in my steps. The more I thought, the more I disliked the notion;

until the distaste grew into a sort of panic terror, and I rushed
into this Preface, which is no more than an advertisement for

readers.
What am I to say for my book? Caleb and Joshua brought back from

Palestine a formidable bunch of grapes; alas! my book produces
naught so nourishing; and for the matter of that, we live in an age

when people prefer a definition to any quantity of fruit.
I wonder, would a negative be found enticing? for, from the

negative point of view, I flatter myself this volume has a certain
stamp. Although it runs to considerablyupwards of two hundred

pages, it contains not a single reference to the imbecility of
God's universe, nor so much as a single hint that I could have made

a better one myself. - I really do not know where my head can have
been. I seem to have forgotten all that makes it glorious to be

man. - 'Tis an omission that renders the book philosophically
unimportant; but I am in hopes the eccentricity may please in

frivolous circles.
To the friend who accompanied me I owe many thanks already, indeed

I wish I owed him nothing else; but at this moment I feel towards
him an almost exaggerated tenderness. He, at least, will become my

reader: - if it were only to follow his own travels alongside of
mine.

R.L.S.
ANTWERP TO BOOM

WE made a great stir in Antwerp Docks. A stevedore and a lot of
dock porters took up the two canoes, and ran with them for the

slip. A crowd of children followed cheering. The CIGARETTE went
off in a splash and a bubble of small breaking water. Next moment

the ARETHUSA was after her. A steamer was coming down, men on the
paddle-box shouted hoarse warnings, the stevedore and his porters

were bawling from the quay. But in a stroke or two the canoes were
away out in the middle of the Scheldt, and all steamers, and

stevedores, and other 'long-shore vanities were left behind.
The sun shone rightly" target="_blank" title="ad.明亮地；聪明地">brightly; the tide was making - four jolly miles an

hour; the wind blew steadily, with occasional squalls. For my
part, I had never been in a canoe under sail in my life; and my

first experiment out in the middle of this big river was not made
without some trepidation. What would happen when the wind first

caught my little canvas? I suppose it was almost as trying a
venture into the regions of the unknown as to publish a first book,

or to marry. But my doubts were not of long duration; and in five
minutes you will not be surprised to learn that I had tied my

sheet.
I own I was a little struck by this circumstance myself; of course,

in company with the rest of my fellow-men, I had always tied the
sheet in a sailing-boat; but in so little and crank a concern as a

canoe, and with these charging squalls, I was not prepared to find
myself follow the same principle; and it inspired me with some

contemptuous views of our regard for life. It is certainly easier
to smoke with the sheet fastened; but I had never before weighed a

comfortable pipe of tobacco against an obvious risk, and gravely
elected for the comfortable pipe. It is a commonplace, that we

cannot answer for ourselves before we have been tried. But it is
not so common a reflection, and surely more consoling, that we

usually find ourselves a great deal braver and better than we
thought. I believe this is every one's experience: but an

apprehension that they may belie themselves in the future prevents
mankind from trumpeting this cheerfulsentimentabroad. I wish

sincerely, for it would have saved me much trouble, there had been
some one to put me in a good heart about life when I was younger;

to tell me how dangers are most portentous on a distant sight; and
how the good in a man's spirit will not suffer itself to be

overlaid, and rarely or never deserts him in the hour of need. But
we are all for tootling on the sentimental flute in literature; and

not a man among us will go to the head of the march to sound the
heady drums.

It was agreeable upon the river. A barge or two went past laden
with hay. Reeds and willows bordered the stream; and cattle and

grey venerable horses came and hung their mild heads over the
embankment. Here and there was a pleasant village among trees,

with a noisy shipping-yard; here and there a villa in a lawn. The
wind served us well up the Scheldt and thereafter up the Rupel; and

we were running pretty free when we began to sight the brickyards
of Boom, lying for a long way on the right bank of the river. The

left bank was still green and pastoral, with alleys of trees along
the embankment, and here and there a flight of steps to serve a

ferry, where perhaps there sat a woman with her elbows on her
knees, or an old gentleman with a staff and silver spectacles. But

Boom and its brickyards grew smokier and shabbier with every
minute; until a great church with a clock, and a woodenbridge over

the river, indicated the central quarters of the town.
Boom is not a nice place, and is only remarkable for one thing:

that the majority of the inhabitants have a private opinion that
they can speak English, which is not justified by fact. This gave

a kind of haziness to our intercourse. As for the Hotel de la
Navigation, I think it is the worst feature of the place. It

boasts of a sanded parlour, with a bar at one end, looking on the
street; and another sanded parlour, darker and colder, with an

empty bird-cage and a tricolour subscription box by way of sole
adornment, where we made shift to dine in the company of three

uncommunicative engineer apprentices and a silent bagman. The
food, as usual in Belgium, was of a nondescript occasional

character; indeed I have never been able to detect anything in the
nature of a meal among this pleasing people; they seem to peck and

trifle with viands all day long in an amateur spirit: tentatively
French, truly German, and somehow falling between the two.

The empty bird-cage, swept and garnished, and with no trace of the
old piping favourite, save where two wires had been pushed apart to

hold its lump of sugar, carried with it a sort of graveyard cheer.
The engineer apprentices would have nothing to say to us, nor

indeed to the bagman; but talked low and sparingly to one another,
or raked us in the gaslight with a gleam of spectacles. For though

handsome lads, they were all (in the Scots phrase) barnacled.
There was an English maid in the hotel, who had been long enough

out of England to pick up all sorts of funny foreign idioms, and
all sorts of curious foreign ways, which need not here be

specified. She spoke to us very fluently in her jargon, asked us
information as to the manners of the present day in England, and

obligingly corrected us when we attempted to answer. But as we
were dealing with a woman, perhaps our information was not so much

thrown away as it appeared. The sex likes to pick up knowledge and