A COUNCIL was held at the hotel, and a dozen different water-routes were discussed. As the boys still wanted to carry out their original design of making a voyage to Quebec, they decided to take the canoes by rail to Rouse’s Point, and from thence to descend the Richelieu River to the St. Lawrence. The railway journey would take nearly a whole day, but they thought it would be a rather pleasant change from the close confinement of canoeing. For it must be admitted that, delightful as they had found canoeing to be, the task of sitting for hours in the cockpit of a canoe with scarcely a possibility of materially changing one’s position was tiresome, and the boys, after a night’s sleep at the Sherbrooke hotel, felt decidedly stiff.
As it would have taken three days to send the canoes to Rouse’s Point by freight, the canoeists were compelled to take them on the same train with themselves. They went to the express office on Monday morning and tried to make a bargain with the express company. The agent astonished them by the enormous price which he demanded, and Harry, who acted as spokesman for the expedition, told him that it was outrageous to ask such a price for carrying four light canoes.
The man turned to a book in which were contained the express company’s rates of charges, and showed Harry that there was a fixed rate for row-boats and shells.
“But,” said Harry, “a canoe is not a row-boat nor a shell. What justice is there in charging as much for a fourteen-foot canoe as for a forty-foot shell?”
“Well,” said the agent, “I dunno as it would be fair. But, then, these canoes of yours are pretty near as big as row-boats.”
“A canoe loaded as ours are don’t weigh over one hundred and ten pounds. How much does a row-boat weigh?”
“Well, about two or three hundred pounds.”
“Then, is it fair to charge as much for a canoe as for a row-boat, that weighs three times as much?”
The agent found it difficult to answer this argument, and after thinking the matter over he agreed to take the canoes at half the rate ordinarily charged for row-boats. The boys were pleased with their victory over him, but they still felt that to be compelled to pay four times as much for the canoes as they paid for their own railroad-tickets was an imposition.