A song or two (without words) and a variation of the music by whistling on the fingers would be sure to bring anybody out of the osiers who was within reach of the outlandish concert, and so it proved, for a woman's head soon peered over a break in the dense cover. She wished to help to carry the boat herself, but the skipper's gallantry had scruples as to this proposal, so she disappeared and soon fetched a man, and we bore the canoe with some trouble through hedges and bushes, and over dykes and ditches, and at last through deep grassy fields, till she was safely placed on the canal.
The man was delighted by a two-franc piece. He had been well paid for listening to bad music. As for the boat she lay still and resigned, awaiting my next move, and as for me I sighed to give a last look backward, and to say with Byron—
"Adieu to thee, fair Rhine! How long delighted
The stranger fain would linger on his way!
Thine is a scene alike where souls united
Or lonely contemplation thus might stray;
And could the ceaseless vultures cease to prey
On self-condemning bosoms, it were here,
Where Nature, nor too sombre nor too gay,
Wild but not rude, awful yet not austere,
Is to the mellow earth as autumn to the year.
Adieu to thee again! a vain adieu!
There can be no farewell to scene like thine;
The mind is colour'd by thy every hue;
And if reluctantly the eyes resign
Their cherish'd gaze upon thee, lovely Rhine!
'Tis with the thankful glance of parting praise;
More mighty spots may rise, more glaring shine,
But none unite in one attaching maze
The brilliant, fair, and soft—the glories of old days.
The negligently grand, the fruitful bloom
Of coming ripeness, the white city's sheen,
The rolling stream, the precipice's gloom,
The forest's growth, and gothic walls between,
The wild rocks shaped as they had turrets been
In mockery of man's art; and these withal
A race of faces happy as the scene,
Whose fertile bounties here extend to all,
Still springing o'er thy banks, though empires near them fall.
But these recede. Above me are the Alps,
The palaces of nature, whose vast walls
Have pinnacled in clouds their snowy scalps,
And throned eternity in icy halls
Of cold sublimity, where forms and falls
The avalanche—the thunderbolt of snow!
All that expands the spirit, yet appals,
Gather around these summits, as to show
How earth may pierce to heaven, yet leave vain man below."
—Childe Harold, Canto III.
To my surprise and satisfaction the canal had a decided current in it, and in the right direction too. It is true that this current was only about two miles an hour, but even that is something; and though the little channel was hardly twelve feet wide, yet it was clear and deep, and by no means stupid to travel on.
After a few miles I came to a drawbridge, which rested within a foot of the water. A man came to raise the bridge by machinery, and he was surprised to see my way of passing it instead, that is, to shove my boat under it, while I quietly walked over the top and got into the boat at the other side. This was, without doubt, the first boat which had traversed the canal without the bridge being raised, but I had passed several very low bridges on the Danube, some of them not two inches above the surface of the water. The very existence of these proves that no boats pass there, and mine only passed by pulling it over the bridge itself. It may be asked, how such a low bridge fares in flood times? and the answer is, that the water simply flows all over it. In some cases the planks which form the roadway are removed when the water rises, and then the wayfaring man who comes to the river must manage in some other mode. His bridge is removed at the very time when the high water makes it most necessary.
The bridge man was so intelligent in his remarks that we determined to stop there and breakfast, so I left the canoe in his charge and found my way to a little publichouse at the hamlet of Gros Kembs, and helped the wizened old lady who ruled there to make me an omelette—my help, by the bye, consisted in ordering, eating, and paying for the omelette, for the rest she was sure to do well enough, as all French women can, and no English ones.