An Inland Voyage | Page 4

day's dinner, and a handful of children. These barges were all tied one
behind the other with tow ropes, to the number of twenty-five or thirty;
and the line was headed and kept in motion by a steamer of strange
construction. It had neither paddle-wheel nor screw; but by some gear
not rightly comprehensible to the unmechanical mind, it fetched up
over its bow a small bright chain which lay along the bottom of the
canal, and paying it out again over the stern, dragged itself forward,
link by link, with its whole retinue of loaded skows. Until one had
found out the key to the enigma, there was something solemn and
uncomfortable in the progress of one of these trains, as it moved gently
along the water with nothing to mark its advance but an eddy alongside
dying away into the wake.
Of all the creatures of commercial enterprise, a canal barge is by far the
most delightful to consider. It may spread its sails, and then you see it
sailing high above the tree-tops and the windmill, sailing on the
aqueduct, sailing through the green corn-lands: the most picturesque of
things amphibious. Or the horse plods along at a foot-pace as if there
were no such thing as business in the world; and the man dreaming at
the tiller sees the same spire on the horizon all day long. It is a mystery
how things ever get to their destination at this rate; and to see the
barges waiting their turn at a lock, affords a fine lesson of how easily
the world may be taken. There should be many contented spirits on
board, for such a life is both to travel and to stay at home.
The chimney smokes for dinner as you go along; the banks of the canal
slowly unroll their scenery to contemplative eyes; the barge floats by

great forests and through great cities with their public buildings and
their lamps at night; and for the bargee, in his floating home, 'travelling
abed,' it is merely as if he were listening to another man's story or
turning the leaves of a picture-book in which he had no concern. He
may take his afternoon walk in some foreign country on the banks of
the canal, and then come home to dinner at his own fireside.
There is not enough exercise in such a life for any high measure of
health; but a high measure of health is only necessary for unhealthy
people. The slug of a fellow, who is never ill nor well, has a quiet time
of it in life, and dies all the easier.
I am sure I would rather be a bargee than occupy any position under
heaven that required attendance at an office. There are few callings, I
should say, where a man gives up less of his liberty in return for regular
meals. The bargee is on shipboard--he is master in his own ship--he can
land whenever he will--he can never be kept beating off a lee-shore a
whole frosty night when the sheets are as hard as iron; and so far as I
can make out, time stands as nearly still with him as is compatible with
the return of bed-time or the dinner-hour. It is not easy to see why a
bargee should ever die.
Half-way between Willebroek and Villevorde, in a beautiful reach of
canal like a squire's avenue, we went ashore to lunch. There were two
eggs, a junk of bread, and a bottle of wine on board the Arethusa; and
two eggs and an Etna cooking apparatus on board the Cigarette. The
master of the latter boat smashed one of the eggs in the course of
disembarkation; but observing pleasantly that it might still be cooked a
la papier, he dropped it into the Etna, in its covering of Flemish
newspaper. We landed in a blink of fine weather; but we had not been
two minutes ashore before the wind freshened into half a gale, and the
rain began to patter on our shoulders. We sat as close about the Etna as
we could. The spirits burned with great ostentation; the grass caught
flame every minute or two, and had to be trodden out; and before long,
there were several burnt fingers of the party. But the solid quantity of
cookery accomplished was out of proportion with so much display; and
when we desisted, after two applications of the fire, the sound egg was
little more than loo-warm; and as for a la papier, it was a cold and
sordid fricassee of printer's ink and broken egg-shell. We made shift to
roast the other two, by putting them close to the burning spirits; and

that with better success. And then we uncorked the bottle of wine, and