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An Inland Voyage, and Travels with a Donkey
An Inland Voyage and Travels with a Donkey Author:Robert Louis Stevenson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ON THE WILLEBROEK CANAL Next morning, when we set forth on the Willebroek Canal, the rain began heavy and chill. The water of the canal stood at about the dri... more »nking temperature of tea; and under this cold aspersion, the surface was covered with steam. The exhilaration of departure, and the easy motion of the boats under each stroke of the paddles, supported us through this misfortune while it lasted; and when the cloud passed and the sun came out again, our spirits went up above the range of stay-at- home humours. A good breeze rustled and shivered in the rows of trees that bordered the canal. The leaves flickered in and out of the light in tumultuous masses. It seemed sailing weather to eye and ear; but down between the banks, the wind reached us only in faint and desultory puffs. There was hardly enough to steer by. Progress was intermittent and unsatisfactory. A jocular person, of marine antecedents, hailed us from the tow- path with a "C'est vite, mais c'est long." The canal was busy enough. Every now and then we met or overtook a long string of boats, with great green tillers; high sterns with a window on either side of the rudder, and perhaps a jug or a flower-pot in one of the windows; a dingy following behind; a woman busied about the day's dinner, and a handful of children. These barges were all tied one behind the other with tow- ropes, to the number of twenty-five or thirty; and theline was headed and kept in motion by a steamer of strange construction. It had neither paddlewheel nor screw; but by some gear not rightly comprehensible to the unmechanical mind, it fetched up over its bow a small bright chain which lay along the bottom of the canal, and paying it out again over the stern, dragged itself forward, link by link, with its whole retinue of loaded scows. Un...« less