When we get to a lock I have to draw to the bank, open my waterproof covering, put my package and paddle ashore, then step out and haul the boat out of the water. By this time two or three persons usually congregate. I select the most likely one, and ask him to help in such a persuasive but dignified manner that he feels it an honour to carry one end of the boat while I take the other, and so we put her in again above the barrier, and, if the man looks poor, I give him a few sous. At some of the locks they asked me for a "carte de permission," or pass for travelling on their canal, but I laughed the matter off, and when they pressed it with a "mais monsieur," I kept treating the proposal as a good joke, until the officials were fairly baffled and gave in. The fact is, we had got into the canal as one gets over the hedge on to a public road, and as I did not use any of the water in locks or any of the lock-keepers' time, and the "pass" was a mere form, price 5_d._, it was but reasonable to go unquestioned; and besides, this "carte" could not be obtained except at the beginning. Having set off late, we went on until about sunset, when the route suddenly passed into the river Ill, a long dull stream, which flows through the Vosges into the Rhine.
This stream was now quite stagnant, and a mere collection of pools covered by thick scum. It was therefore a great comfort to have only a short voyage upon it.
When the Rob Roy again entered the canal, an acquaintance was formed with a fine young lad, who was reading as he sauntered along. He was reading of canoe adventures in America, and so I got him to walk some miles beside me, and to help the boat over some locks, telling him he could thus see how different actual canoeing was from the book stories about it made up of romance! He was pining for some expansion of his sphere, and specially for foreign travel, and above all to see England.
We went to an _auberge_, where I ordered a bottle of wine, the cost of which was twopence halfpenny. After he left, and as it was now dark, I halted, put my boat in a lock-keeper's house, and made his son conduct me to the little village of Illfurth, a most unsophisticated place indeed, with a few vineyards on a hill behind it, though the railway has a road station near. It was not easy to mistake which was the best house here even in the dark, so I inquired of Madame at "The White Horse" if she could give me a bed. "Not in a room for one alone; three others will be sleeping in the same chamber."