Here, O idle water-wanderer, let your boat glide with the scarcely moving current, and gaze upon the leafy groves of the sub-aqueous wilderness lit up by the rays of the sun, and watch the fish moving singly or in shoals at various depths—the bearded barbel, the spotted trout, the shimmering bream, and the bronzen tench. Watch, too, the speckled water-snakes gliding upon the gravel or lurking like the ancient serpent in mimic gardens of Eden. Mark all the varied life and wondrous beauty of nature there. Above all, do not hurry, for little is seen by those who hasten on.
At a weir of sticks and stones forming a rather wide dam, overgrown by tall hemp-agrimony now in flower, we met with our first difficulty. There was no overflow to help us, for in this time of drought the mill-wheel needed all the stream to turn it; so the boat had to be lifted over the stakes and stones. Into the water we had to go, and boots and socks, being now put aside, were not worn again for five days, except when we went ashore in the evening, and had to make an effort to look respectable.
The dam being passed, the boat shot down a rapid current; then, as the bed widened out and the water stilled, we were hidden from the world by reeds, through which we had to force a way while the sun smote us and frizzled us. Countless dragonflies flashed their brilliant colours as they whirled and darted, green frogs plunged at our approach from their diving-boards of matted rush, or quirked defiance from the banks where they were safe; and now and again a startled kingfisher showed us the blue gleam of a wing above the brown maces of the bulrushes and the high-hanging tassels of the sedges.
The bell of an unseen church a long way off sounded the mid-day angelus, and told that we had not drifted so far as it appeared from the peopled world. Leaving the reeds, we passed again into the shade of alders that stretched their gnarled, fantastic roots far over the babbling or dreaming water, and thence again amongst the sunny reeds. And so the hours went by, and there were no villages, or even houses, to be seen, but the little rough mills beside the slowly toiling wheel, which in most cases seemed to be the only living thing there. Once, however, there was a naked child, very brown, and as round as a spider between the hips and the waist, playing upon a flowery bank above the mother, who wore a brilliant-coloured kerchief on her head, and who knelt beside the water as she rinsed the little elfs shirt. I thought the picture pretty enough to make a note of it. This caused some contemptuous surprise to my companion in the back of the boat—not yet alive to the innocent cunning of the artist and writer, for he asked me, in the descriptive language of the British schoolboy:
'Are you going to stick down that?'
On we went, turning and turning, gliding into nooks that seemed each more charming than the other, and having a constant succession of delightful surprises, interrupted only by the mill-dams, which were distressingly frequent.
The hot hours stole away or passed into the mellowness of evening, and the marsh-mallows that fringed the stream were looking coolly white when we drew near to Riberac. The water widened and deepened, and we met a pleasure-boat, vast and gaudy, recalling some picture of Queen Elizabeth's barge on the Thames. Under an awning sat a bevy of ladies in bright raiment, pleasant to look at, and in front of them were several young men valiantly rowing, or, rather, digging their short sculls into the water, as if they were trying to knock the brains out of some fluvial monsters endeavouring to capture the youth and loveliness under the awning.
Having reached that part of the river which was nearest Riberac, I had to find a place where the boat could be left, and where it would be safe from the enterprise of boys—a bad invention in all countries. It is just, however, to the French boy to say that he is not quite so fiendish out of doors as the English one; but he makes things even by his conduct at home, where he conscientiously devotes his animal spirits to the destruction of his too-indulgent parents.
My difficulty was solved by a kind butcher, whose garden ran down to the water. He let me chain the boat to one of his trees, and he took our fowl, which was intended for lunch next day, and put it into his meat-safe—an excellent service, for the drainage of his slaughter-house, emptying into the river by the side of the boat, was enough to make even a live fowl lose its freshness in a single night. We were soon settled in a comfortable inn that prided itself, not without reason, upon its cuisine. Here we had a friture of gudgeons from the Dronne, which is famous throughout a wide region for the quality of these and other fish.
The next morning I bought a saucepan, a melon, and grapes—which were already ripe, although the date was the 9th August. Thus laden, we returned to the boat and to the kindly butcher, who gave us our fowl wrapped up, not in a newspaper as we had left it, but in a sheet of spotless white paper. Having refilled our bottles, some with water, others with wine, we parted from our hospitable acquaintance with pleasant words, and were afloat again before the hour of eight. We had a serious wetting at the first weir, but were dry again before we stopped to lunch. This time we landed, and chose our spot in a beautiful little meadow, where an alder cast its shade upon the bank. It was far from all habitations, but had the case been otherwise, there would have been no danger of our being disturbed by a voice from behind saying: 'You have no right to land here,' or, 'You are trespassing in this field.'