"The Chain Barrier."
However, a man happened to see my movements and the canoe, and soon he called some dozen of his fellow navvies from their work to look at the navigator.
The captain was therefore incited by these spectators to try the passage, and I mentally resolved at any rate to be cool and placid, however much discomfiture was to be endured. The boat was steered to the very best of my power, but the bow of the canoe swerved an inch in the swift oblique descent, and instantly it got locked in the chains, while I quietly got out (whistling an air in slow time), and then, in the water with all my clothes on, I steadily lifted the boat through the iron network and got into her, dripping wet, but trying to behave as if it were only the usual thing. The navvies cheered a long and loud bravo! but I felt somewhat ashamed of having yielded to the desire for ignorant applause, and when finally round the next corner I got out and changed my wet things, a wiser and a sadder man, but dry.
This part of the river is in the heart of the champagne country, and all the softly swelling hills about are thickly covered by vineyards. The vine for champagne is exceedingly small, and grows round one stick, and the hillside looks just like a carding-brush, from the millions of these little sharp-pointed rods upright in the ground and close together, without any fence whatever between the innumerable lots. The grape for champagne is always red, and never white, so they said, though "white grapes are grown for eating." During the last two months few people have consumed more grapes in this manner than the chief mate of the Rob Roy canoe.
On one of these hills we noticed the house of Madame Clicquot, whose name has graced many a cork of champagne bottles and of bottles not champagne.
The vineyards of Ai, near Epernay, are the most celebrated for their wine. After the bottles are filled, they are placed neck downwards, and the sediment collects near the cork. Each bottle is then uncorked in this position, and the confined gas forces out a little of the wine with the sediment, while a skilful man dexterously replaces the cork when this sediment has been expelled. One would think that only a very skilful man can perform such a feat. When the bottles are stored in "caves," or vast cellars, the least change of temperature causes them to burst by hundreds. Sometimes one-fourth of the bottles explode in this manner, and it is said that the renowned Madame Clicquot lost 400,000 in the hot autumn of 1843, before sufficient ice could be fetched from Paris to cool her spacious cellars. Every year about fifty million bottles of genuine champagne are made in France, and no one can say how many more millions of bottles of "French champagne" are imbibed every year by a confiding world.
The Marne is a large and deep river, and its waters are kept up by barriers every few miles. It is rather troublesome to pass these by taking the boat out and letting it down on the other side, and in crossing one of them I gave a serious blow to the stern of the canoe against an iron bar. This blow started four planks from the sternpost, and revealed to me also that the whole frame had suffered from the journey at night on an open truck. However, as my own ship's carpenter was on board, and had nails and screws, we soon managed to make all tight again, and by moonlight came to Dormans, where I got two men to carry the boat as usual to an hotel, and had the invariable run of visitors from that time until everybody went to bed.
It is curious to remark the different names by which the canoe has been called, and among these the following:—"Batteau," "schiff," "bôt," "barca," "canôt," "caique" (the soldiers who have been in the Crimea call it thus), "chaloupe" "navire," "schipp" (Low German), "yacht" ("jacht"—Danish, "jaht," from "jagen," to ride quickly—properly a boat drawn by horses). Several people have spoken of it as "batteau à vapeur," for in the centre of France they have never seen a steamboat, but the usual name with the common people is "petit batteau" and among the educated people "nacelle" or "perissoir;" this last as we call a dangerous boat a "coffin" or "sudden death."
An early start next morning found me slipping along with a tolerable current and under sail before a fine fresh breeze, but with the same unalterable blue sky. I had several interesting conversations with farmers and others riding to market along the road which here skirts the river. What most surprises the Frenchman is that a traveller can possibly be happy alone! Not one hour have I had of ennui, and, however selfish it may seem, it is true that for this sort of journey I prefer to travel entirely seul.
Pleasant trees and pretty gardens are here on every side in plenty, but where are the houses of the gentlemen of France, and where are the French gentlemen themselves? This is a difference between France and England which cannot fail to "knock" the observant traveller (as Artemus Ward would say)—the notable absence of country seats during hours and hours of passage along the best routes; whereas in England the prospect from almost every hill of woodland would have a great house at the end of its vista, and the environs of every town would stretch into outworks of villas smiling in the sun. The French have ways and fashions which are not ours, but their nation is large enough to entitle them to a standard of their own, just as the Americans, with so great a people agreed on the matter, may surely claim liberty to speak with a twang, and to write of a "plow."