NEXT morning, when we set forth on the Willebroek Canal, the rain began
heavy and chill. The water of the canal stood at about the drinking
temperature of tea; and under this cold aspersion, the surface was
covered with steam. The exhilaration of departure, and the easy motion
of the boats under each stroke of the paddles, supported us through this
misfortune while it lasted; and when the cloud passed and the sun came
out again, our spirits went up above the range of stay-at-home humours.
A good breeze rustled and shivered in the rows of trees that bordered the
canal. The leaves flickered in and out of the light in tumultuous
masses. It seemed sailing weather to eye and ear; but down between the
banks, the wind reached us only in faint and desultory puffs. There was
hardly enough to steer by. Progress was intermittent and unsatisfactory.
A jocular person, of marine antecedents, hailed us from the tow-path with
a ‘_C’est vite_, _mais c’est long_.’
The canal was busy enough. Every now and then we met or overtook a long
string of boats, with great green tillers; high sterns with a window on
either side of the rudder, and perhaps a jug or a flower-pot in one of
the windows; a dinghy following behind; a woman busied about the 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 _à 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 _à la papier_, it was a cold and sordid
_fricassée_ 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
sat down in a ditch with our canoe aprons over our knees. It rained
smartly. Discomfort, when it is honestly uncomfortable and makes no
nauseous pretensions to the contrary, is a vastly humorous business; and
people well steeped and stupefied in the open air are in a good vein for
laughter. From this point of view, even egg _à la papier_ offered by way
of food may pass muster as a sort of accessory to the fun. But this
manner of jest, although it may be taken in good part, does not invite
repetition; and from that time forward, the Etna voyaged like a gentleman
in the locker of the _Cigarette_.
It is almost unnecessary to mention that when lunch was over and we got
aboard again and made sail, the wind promptly died away. The rest of the
journey to Villevorde, we still spread our canvas to the unfavouring air;
and with now and then a puff, and now and then a spell of paddling,
drifted along from lock to lock, between the orderly trees.
It was a fine, green, fat landscape; or rather a mere green water-lane,
going on from village to village. Things had a settled look, as in
places long lived in. Crop-headed children spat upon us from the bridges
as we went below, with a true conservative feeling. But even more
conservative were the fishermen, intent upon their floats, who let us go
by without one glance. They perched upon sterlings and buttresses and
along the slope of the embankment, gently occupied. They were
indifferent, like pieces of dead nature. They did not move any more than
if they had been fishing in an old Dutch print. The leaves fluttered,
the water lapped, but they continued in one stay like so many churches
established by law. You might have trepanned every one of their innocent
heads, and found no more than so much coiled fishing-line below their
skulls. I do not care for your stalwart fellows in india-rubber
stockings breasting up mountain torrents with a salmon rod; but I do
dearly love the class of man who plies his unfruitful art, for ever and a
day, by still and depopulated waters.
At the last lock, just beyond Villevorde, there was a lock-mistress who
spoke French comprehensibly, and told us we were still a couple of
leagues from Brussels. At the same place, the rain began again. It fell
in straight, parallel lines; and the surface of the canal was thrown up
into an infinity of little crystal fountains. There were no beds to be
had in the neighbourhood. Nothing for it but to lay the sails aside and
address ourselves to steady paddling in the rain.
Beautiful country houses, with clocks and long lines of shuttered
windows, and fine old trees standing in groves and avenues, gave a rich
and sombre aspect in the rain and the deepening dusk to the shores of the
canal. I seem to have seen something of the same effect in engravings:
opulent landscapes, deserted and overhung with the passage of storm. And
throughout we had the escort of a hooded cart, which trotted shabbily
along the tow-path, and kept at an almost uniform distance in our wake.