Strangely enough, the river in this part of its course actually gets less and less as you descend it. Every few miles some of the water is drawn off by a small canal to irrigate the neighbouring land, and in a season of drought like this, very little of the abstracted part returns. They told me that the Moselle river never has been so "basse" for 30 years, and I was therefore an unlucky voyageur in having to do for the first time what could have been done more easily in any other season.
As evening fell we reached the town of Chatel, and the Rob Roy was sent to bed in the washhouse of the hotel. But five minutes had not elapsed before a string of visitors came for the daily inspection of the boat.
As I sauntered along the bridge a sprightly youth came up, who had not seen the canoe, but who knew I was "one of her crew." He was most enthusiastic on the subject, and took me to see his boat, a deadly-looking flat-bottomed open cot, painted all manner of patterns; and as he was extremely proud of her I did not tell him that a boat is like a woman, too good to paint: a pretty one is spoiled by paint, and a plain one is made hideous.
Then he came for a look at the Rob Roy, and, poor fellow, it was amusing to observe how instantly his countenance fell from pride to intense envy. He had a "boating mind," but had never seen a really pretty boat till now. However, to console himself he invited me to another hotel to drink success to the canoe in Bavarian beer, and to see my drawings, and then I found that my intelligent, eager, and, we may add, gentlemanly friend was the waiter there!
A melancholy sensation pervaded the Rob Roy to-day, in consequence of a sad event, the loss of the captain's knife. We had three knives on board in starting from England; one had been given away in reward for some signal service, and this which was now lost was one with a metal haft and a curious hook at the end, a special description made in Berlin, and very useful to the tourist. It is not to be wondered that in so many leaps and somersaults, and with such constant requirements for the knife to mend pencils, &c., &c., the trusty blade should at last have disappeared, but the event suggests to the next canoeman that his boat-knife should be secured to a lanyard.
One singular conformation of the river-bed occurred in my short tour upon this part of the Moselle. Without much warning the banks of rock became quite vertical and narrowed close together. They reminded me of the rock-cutting near Liverpool, on the old railway to Manchester. The stream was very deep here, but its bed was full of enormous stones and crags, very sharp and jagged, which, however, could be easily avoided, because the current was gentle.
A man I found fishing told me that a little further on there was an "impossible" place, so when after half a mile the well-known sound of rushing waters came (the ear got marvellous quick for this), we beat to quarters and prepared for action.
The ribbon to keep my hat was tied down. Sleeves and trousers were tucked up. The covering was braced tight and the baggage secured below; and then came the eager pleasures of anticipating, wishing, hoping, fearing, that are mixed up in the word excitement.
The sound was quite near now, but the river took the strangest of all the forms I had yet seen.
If you suppose a trench cut along Oxford-street to get at the gas-pipes, and if all the water of a river which had filled the street before suddenly disappeared in the trench, that would be exactly what the Moselle had now become.