Time seemed no object to these people, they were no doubt paid by the day. The sun shone upon them and it was pleasant simply to exist and to loiter in life, so why make haste? Finally we ascended as the lock filled, and then a second and a third joint cut off from our too long tail of barges had to be passed in also. After all, the captain and sometimes the whole crew deliberately adjourned to the lock-keeper’s house for a “glass” and a chat; and when that was entirely done, and every topic of the day discussed, they all came back and had another supplemental parliament on the steamer’s deck, like ladies saying “good bye” at a morning visit; so that, perhaps, in an hour from beginning it, the work of ten minutes was accomplished, and the engine turned again once more—a tedious progress. Thus it was that four nights and part of five days were passed in mounting the Seine.
The scenery on the banks is in many places interesting, in a few it is pretty, and it is never positively dull. The traffic on the river is considerable above Rouen; but as there are two railways besides, few passengers go by water. The architecture and engineering on this fine river are indeed splendid. The noble bridges, the vast locks, barrages, quays, barriers, and embankments are far superior to ours on the Thames, though that river floats more wealth in a day than the Seine does in a month.
The sailors and dockmen were eager for my cargo of books; and among the various odd ways by which these had to be given to men on large vessels, there is one shown in the sketch alongside, where the cabin-boy of a steamer looking through the round deadlight with an imploring request in his face, stretched out an eager hand to catch the book lifted up on the end of one of my sculls.
Then the neatness and apparent cleanliness of the villages, and the well-clothed, well-mannered people—all so “respectable.” France is progressing by great leaps and bounds, at least in what arrests the eye. Its progress in government, liberty, and politics, is perhaps rather like that in a waltz.
Life in a towed yacht, alone on the Seine, is a somewhat hard life. You have to be alert, and to steer for sometimes twenty hours a day, and to cook and eat while steering. At about three o’clock in the morning the steamer’s crew seemed suddenly to rise from the deck by magic, and stumble over coal-sacks, and thus abruptly to begin the day. We stopped about nine o’clock at night, and the crew flopped down on deck again, asleep in a moment, but not I for an hour or two.
As the grey dawn uncovered a new and cloudless sky, the fierce bubblings in the boiler became strong enough to turn the engine, and our rope was slipped from the bank. Savoury odours from the steamer soon after announced to me their breakfast cooking, and the Rob Roy’s lamp too was speedily in full blast. Eggs or butter or milk were instantly purveyed, if within reach at a lock; sometimes delicious strawberries and other fruits or dainties, the only difficulty was to cook at all properly while steering and being towed.
It is easy to cook and to steer at sea without looking up for many minutes. The compass tells you by a glance, and if not, the tiller has a nudge which speaks to the man who knows the meaning of its various pressures, through any part of his body it may happen to touch. But if you forget to steer constantly and minutely in a heavy boat towed on a river, she swerves in an instant, and shoots out right and left, and dives into banks or trees, or into the steamer’s side-swell, and the man at the wheel turns round with a courteous French scowl, for he feels by his tiller in a moment, and you cannot escape his rebuke.
There was no romance in this manner of progress up the river. The poetry of wandering where you will, and all alone, cannot be thrown around a boat pulled by the nose while you are sitting in her all day. The Rob Roy, with mast down, and tied by a tow-rope, was like an eagle limping with clipped pinion and a chained foot. Still, for the man not churlish, there is scarcely any time or place or person wholly devoid of interest, if he is determined to find it there.
The steamboat captain and crew were chatty enough; and when we towed a string of barges, the yawl was lashed alongside of one of these (and not at the end of the line), so that I visited my fellow-travellers, and soon became friends, and then interchanged presents. All this “Social Science” of the sailor was far better done by the French bargee than in England.