But the story of the canal will come further along. It is essential in the narrative of the initial cruise of "Sometub" because its towpath, worn by 20 successive progenies of mules, is the path that paradoxically leads far, far away from the beaten path of modern travel.
On Saturday evening, July 15th, we reached Cumberland. Rain was falling but this did not deter us from launching "Sometub" in the waters of the canal. We had made up our minds that rain must be disregarded—and subsequent experience proved that this step toward resignation to the elements was well taken. Before the voyage was three days old we realized that Jupiter Pluvius was a stowaway with us. For 100 miles we were the harbingers of showers, the advance agents of thunder, lightning, rain and cloudbursts.
We had hoped to leave Cumberland before sunset and tie up for the night far from the noise of the city, but the best we could do between showers was to put everything in shipshape and wait for the dawn. Rain pattered down all night long and came in repeated gusts during the day. In the meantime we sat on the hospitable porch of a retired canal boat skipper and listened to his reminiscences of the "good old days." Our delay just now was due to our failure to procure our waybill, a document which gave us the right of way through the locks from Cumberland to Georgetown. In this document "Sometub" was put down as a motor-propelled craft of one ton net register and stipulated that it should proceed at a speed not exceeding four miles an hour. The waybill cost $5.10.
Late in the afternoon we were informed that a deputy collector of the port, who lived "down the canal beyond the bridge," would hand us our waybill as we passed. Simultaneously with this good news the rain ceased and the sun came out in radiant glory. In two minutes we were away and broke the speed limit with the impunity of a motor driver who knows that if he does not exceed the legal speed his machine will stop altogether. We made a dash for the waybill. "Pshaw!" exclaimed the collector. "It's too bad I didn't know the name of your boat. I just wrote 'launch.' If I had known it had a name like that I would have put it down, sure."
"What are the rules?" we asked him.
"Keep to the left—always—that's all. Tie up on the berm side (to the left) and don't let yourself get dragged into the flume by the current at the locks." We thanked him and started again. We rounded the big bend of the Potomac, turning to the eastward where the blue horizon of the mountains melted into the blue-gray mists and clouds of the weeping sky. In what seemed an increditably short time we had left the city behind and glided along the vine-fringed, ribbon-like pool that wound its way into sequestered solitudes among the towering hills. Here and there a farmhouse was visible in the distance on the uplands and occasionally a lonely cabin squatted among the willows and dank weeds that grew in the marshy places, but for the greater part of our run on this level we hugged close to the hillside or proceeded through courses of broad meadows.
It was the first time an outboard motor cruiser had been seen on the canal, and for that matter in the Potomac valley, and "Sometub" attracted much attention among the country folk and the crews of the boats. We passed our first canal boat beyond South Cumberland at a point where the channel was scarcely 30 feet wide and narrowly escaped rasping off our propeller on a ledge of rocks that formed the berm bank, our danger being due to the provokingly deliberate action of the steersman on the big mule-drawn hulk. After that we waited for sufficient leeway before attempting to pass canal boats in narrow channels.
At sunset a whitewashed log house came into view and as we approached we recognized the huge arms of the lock gates. Beyond the locktender's cabin we saw the roofs of the houses in the little village of North Branch, Md. Here was our first lock, the first of the 75 in 184 miles on the canal between Cumberland and Georgetown. We were curious to know how "Sometub" would behave in an old-fashioned lock with leaky gates and were anxious to push on to the tunnel some 30 miles east of Cumberland where the canal for nearly a mile of its course passes underneath one of the lofty ridges of the Alleghanies. Ominous clouds in the west hastened the approaching night. The proximity of a shelter in case of a heavy rainstorm caused us to accept the locktender's hospitality to tie up for the night alongside the flume at the head of the lock.
