the horizon all day long. It is a mystery how things ever get to
their destination at this rate; and to see the barges waiting their

turn at a lock, affords a fine lesson of how easily the world may
be taken. There should be many contented spirits on board, for

such a life is both to travel and to stay at home.
The chimney smokes for dinner as you go along; the banks of the

canal slowly unroll their scenery to contemplative eyes; the barge
floats by great forests and through great cities with their public

buildings and their lamps at night; and for the bargee, in his
floating home, 'travelling abed,' it is merely as if he were

listening to another man's story or turning the leaves of a
picture-book in which he had no concern. He may take his afternoon

walk in some foreign country on the banks of the canal, and then
come home to dinner at his own fireside.

There is not enough exercise in such a life for any high measure of
health; but a high measure of health is only necessary for

unhealthy people. The slug of a fellow, who is never ill nor well,
has a quiet time of it in life, and dies all the easier.

I am sure I would rather be a bargee than occupy any position under
heaven that required attendance at an office. There are few

callings, I should say, where a man gives up less of his liberty in
return for regular meals. The bargee is on shipboard - he is

master in his own ship - he can land whenever he will - he can
never be kept beating off a lee-shore a whole frosty night when the

sheets are as hard as iron; and so far as I can make out, time
stands as nearly still with him as is compatible with the return of

bed-time or the dinner-hour. It is not easy to see why a bargee
should ever die.

Half-way between Willebroek and Villevorde, in a beautiful reach of
canal like a squire's avenue, we went ashore to lunch. There were

two eggs, a junk of bread, and a bottle of wine on board the
ARETHUSA; and two eggs and an Etna cooking apparatus on board the

CIGARETTE. The master of the latter boat smashed one of the eggs
in the course of disembarkation; but observing pleasantly that it

might still be cooked A LA PAPIER, he dropped it into the Etna, in
its covering of Flemish newspaper. We landed in a blink of fine

weather; but we had not been two minutes ashore before the wind
freshened into half a gale, and the rain began to patter on our

shoulders. We sat as close about the Etna as we could. The
spirits burned with great ostentation; the grass caught flame every

minute or two, and had to be trodden out; and before long, there
were several burnt fingers of the party. But the solid quantity of

cookery accomplished was out of proportion with so much display;
and when we desisted, after two applications of the fire, the sound

egg was little more than loo-warm; and as for A LA PAPIER, it was a
cold and sordid FRICASSEE of printer's ink and broken egg-shell.

We made shift to roast the other two, by putting them close to the
burning spirits; and that with better success. And then we

uncorked the bottle of wine, and sat down in a ditch with our canoe
aprons over our knees. It rained smartly. Discomfort, when it is

honestly uncomfortable and makes no nauseous pretensions to the
contrary, is a vastlyhumorous business; and people well steeped

and stupefied in the open air are in a good vein for laughter.
From this point of view, even egg A LA PAPIER offered by way of

food may pass muster as a sort of accessory to the fun. But this
manner of jest, although it may be taken in good part, does not

invite repetition; and from that time forward, the Etna voyaged
like a gentleman in the locker of the CIGARETTE.

It is almost unnecessary to mention that when lunch was over and we
got aboard again and made sail, the wind promptly died away. The

rest of the journey to Villevorde, we still spread our canvas to
the unfavouring air; and with now and then a puff, and now and then

a spell of paddling, drifted along from lock to lock, between the
orderly trees.

It was a fine, green, fat landscape; or rather a mere green water-
lane, going on from village to village. Things had a settled look,

as in places long lived in. Crop-headed children spat upon us from
the bridges as we went below, with a true conservative feeling.

But even more conservative were the fishermen, intent upon their
floats, who let us go by without one glance. They perched upon

sterlings and buttresses and along the slope of the embankment,
gently occupied. They were indifferent, like pieces of dead

nature. They did not move any more than if they had been fishing
in an old Dutch print. The leaves fluttered, the water lapped, but

they continued in one stay like so many churches established by
law. You might have trepanned every one of their innocent heads,

and found no more than so much coiled fishing-line below their
skulls. I do not care for your stalwart fellows in india-rubber

stockings breasting up mountain torrents with a salmon rod; but I
do dearly love the class of man who plies his unfruitful art, for

ever and a day, by still and depopulated waters.
At the last lock, just beyond Villevorde, there was a lock-mistress

who spoke French comprehensibly, and told us we were still a couple
of leagues from Brussels. At the same place, the rain began again.

It fell in straight, parallel lines; and the surface of the canal
was thrown up into an infinity of little crystal fountains. There

were no beds to be had in the neighbourhood. Nothing for it but to
lay the sails aside and address ourselves to steady paddling in the

rain.
Beautiful country houses, with clocks and long lines of shuttered

windows, and fine old trees standing in groves and avenues, gave a
rich and sombre aspect in the rain and the deepening dusk to the

shores of the canal. I seem to have seen something of the same
effect in engravings: opulent landscapes, deserted and overhung

with the passage of storm. And throughout we had the escort of a
hooded cart, which trotted shabbily along the tow-path, and kept at

an almost uniform distance in our wake.
THE ROYAL SPORT NAUTIQUE

THE rain took off near Laeken. But the sun was already down; the
air was chill; and we had scarcely a dry stitch between the pair of

us. Nay, now we found ourselves near the end of the Allee Verte,
and on the very threshold of Brussels, we were confronted by a

serious difficulty. The shores were closely lined by canal boats
waiting their turn at the lock. Nowhere was there any convenient

landing-place; nowhere so much as a stable-yard to leave the canoes
in for the night. We scrambled ashore and entered an ESTAMINET

where some sorry fellows were drinking with the landlord. The
landlord was pretty round with us; he knew of no coach-house or

stable-yard, nothing of the sort; and seeing we had come with no
mind to drink, he did not conceal his impatience to be rid of us.

One of the sorry fellows came to the rescue. Somewhere in the
corner of the basin there was a slip, he informed us, and something

else besides, not very clearly defined by him, but hopefully
construed by his hearers.

Sure enough there was the slip in the corner of the basin; and at
the top of it two nice-looking lads in boating clothes. The

ARETHUSA addressed himself to these. One of them said there would
be no difficulty about a night's lodging for our boats; and the

other, taking a cigarette from his lips, inquired if they were made
by Searle and Son. The name was quite an introduction. Half-a-

dozen other young men came out of a boat-house bearing the
superscription ROYAL SPORT NAUTIQUE, and joined in the talk. They

were all very polite, voluble, and enthusiastic; and their
discourse was interlarded with English boating terms, and the names

of English boat-builders and English clubs. I do not know, to my
shame, any spot in my native land where I should have been so

warmly received by the same number of people. We were English
boating-men, and the Belgian boating-men fell upon our necks. I

wonder if French Huguenots were as cordially greeted by English
Protestants when they came across the Channel out of great

tribulation. But after all, what religion knits people so closely
as a common sport?