"Frenchmen who don't know the Marseillaise when they hear it," said he, "can't be expected to know anything about the appliances of modern civilization."
The morning's rain, the late start and sundry delays had hindered the fleet more than it realized, and the sun was setting before the canal was half-way passed. It became necessary therefore to camp on the canal bank, but this was no great hardship, as a smooth strip of green sward opportunely presented itself on the side away from the tow-path, as shown at the left of this sketch. A moral title is appended to this illustration because the Vice went off by himself after supplies and came back thoroughly sobered, as he intimated, by the sublime immensity of the canal, which, he said, stretched away before him like the narrow path which he remembered as depicted in the "Pilgrim's Progress" of his boyhood.
Alone with his Conscience.
Indeed there was a pastoral beauty about this canal which one is not apt to associate with artificial waterways. It was but a few miles in length and skirted a lovely valley, rich in historic association and beautifully diversified by wood and meadow, hill and stream. Beyond the lowlands, as shown in the sketch, rose a commanding and somewhat isolated mountain range which caught the last rays of the setting sun, and welcomed him again in the morning in such charming fashion that it was simple luxury to exist within the range of its influence. Since crossing the line, too, minor incidents of daily recurrence recalled the fact that this valley was first penetrated by emissaries of "Mother Church." On every side the little tin covered spires, one just like the other, arose, and at sunrise and sunset, the matin and vesper bells sent their notes far and near, reminding all within range that the priest was at the altar holding aloft the sacred emblems and repeating the angelus. The members of the expedition were all Protestants by birth and association, but there was not one of them who had not a tender spot in his heart when the bells rang out and he knew that hundreds of fellow beings, far and near, paused a moment at their tasks to repeat the prayer that the church had taught them to say. These little churches, of which this may serve as a type, form a charming feature of the Acadian land. You may walk into any of them at any hour, and some are very quaint, and in a strange fashion touching, in their interior design and adornment. It seemed as though the prayers of generations of simple minded folk were imprisoned there, willing and ever anxious to get up to heaven, if that were possible, and yet hampered somehow so that they did not make it out. Often as one or another of the quartette strolled into a village church and sat down in the suggestive silence, a man or woman would come in and kneeling repeat a prayer. To say that the act is mechanical and heartless is not to the purpose. It may be both mechanical and heartless, but it is not meaningless, and through it and other like observances, the church retains a tolerably strong hold upon a very considerable fraction of Christendom. Would that the home-feeling could be as successfully cultivated by some of our Protestant sects as it seems to be by the church of Rome. Perhaps however the home feeling as it there exists is incompatible with advanced thought, and the liquefaction of gases, and Boston Monday Lectures.
The Typical Church.
So at least the Vice was remarking when he suddenly became aware that a canal-propeller was coming down his recent straight and narrow path, towing behind her an endless chain of lumber barges. Anxiety for the boats banished every other sentiment. The Red Lakers were confidently trusted to take care of themselves by their commanders, but Chrysalids must be carefully tended and held off shore, lest the swell should dash them against the stone facing of the embankment. Considering what the Rochefort had been through on her various lee shores, this solicitude seemed rather superfluous. Furthermore, no perceptible swell was caused by the passage of the tow, and the only notable result was that the Purser, in his anxiety to hold the Arethusela off shore with a boat-hook, lost his balance and took a ducking, much to the amusement of spectators on the canal boats.