How careful I was at the first shallow! getting out and wading as I lowered the boat. A month afterwards I would dash over them with a shove here and a stroke there in answer to a hoarse croak of the stones at the bottom grinding against my keel.
And the first barrier--how anxious it made me, to think by what means shall I get over. A man appeared just in time (N.B.--They _always_ do), and twopence made him happy for his share of carrying the boat round by land, and I jumped in again as before.
Sailing was easy, too, in a fine wide river, strong and deep, and with a favouring breeze, and when the little steamer passed I drew alongside and got my penny roll and penny glass of beer, while the wondering passengers (the first of many amazed foreigners) smiled, chattered, and then looked grave--for was it not indecorous to laugh at an Englishman evidently mad, poor fellow?
The voyage was chequered by innumerable little events, all perfectly different from those one meets on shore, and when I came to the forts at Huy and knew the first day's work was done, the persuasion was complete that quite a new order of sensations had been set going.
Next morning I found the boat safe in the coach-house and the sails still drying on the harness-pegs, where we had left them, but the ostler and all his folks were nowhere to be seen. Everybody had gone to join the long funeral procession of a great musician, who lived fifty years at Huy, though we never heard of him before, or of Huy either; yet you see it is in our Map at page 291.
The pleasure of meandering with a new river is very peculiar and fascinating. Each few yards brings a novelty, or starts an excitement. A crane jumps up here, a duck flutters there, splash leaps a gleaming trout by your side, the rushing sound of rocks warns you round that corner, or anon you come suddenly upon a millrace. All these, in addition to the scenery and the people and the weather, and the determination that you _must_ get on, over, through, or under every difficulty, and cannot leave your boat in a desolate wold, and ought to arrive at a house before dark, and that your luncheon bag is long since empty; all these, I say, keep the mind awake, which would perchance dose away for 100 miles in a first-class carriage.