the
back opens into the kitchen, and from that another door opens into a
sleeping-room for the boatmen. A huge wooden tiller curves over the
stern of the boat, and the helmsman stands upon the kitchen-roof. Two
canoes are floating behind, holding back, at the end of their long
tow-ropes, as if reluctant to follow so clumsy a leader. This is an
accurate description of the horse-yacht. If necessary it could be sworn
to before a notary public. But I am perfectly sure that you might read
this page through without skipping a word, and if you had never seen the
creature with your own eyes, you would have no idea how absurd it looks
and how comfortable it is.

While we were stowing away our trunks and bags under the cots, and
making an equitable division of the hooks upon the walls, the motive
power of the yacht stood patiently upon the shore, stamping a hoof, now
and then, or shaking a shaggy head in mild protest against the flies.
Three more pessimistic-looking horses I never saw. They were harnessed
abreast, and fastened by a prodigious tow-rope to a short post in the
middle of the forward deck. Their driver was a truculent, brigandish,
bearded old fellow in long boots, a blue flannel shirt, and a black
sombrero. He sat upon the middle horse, and some wild instinct of colour
had made him tie a big red handkerchief around his shoulders, so that
the eye of the beholder took delight in him. He posed like a bold, bad
robber-chief. But in point of fact I believe he was the mildest and
most inoffensive of men. We never heard him say anything except at a
distance, to his horses, and we did not inquire what that was.

Well, as I have said, we were haggling courteously over those hooks
in the cabin, when the boat gave a lurch. The bow swung out into the
stream. There was a scrambling and clattering of iron horse-shoes on the
rough shingle of the bank; and when we looked out of doors, our house
was moving up the river with the boat under it.

The Ristigouche is a noble stream, stately and swift and strong. It
rises among the dense forests in the northern part of New Brunswick--a
moist upland region, of never-failing springs and innumerous lakes--and
pours a flood of clear, cold water one hundred and fifty miles northward
and eastward through the hills into the head of the Bay of Chaleurs.
There are no falls in its course, but rapids everywhere. It is steadfast
but not impetuous, quick but not turbulent, resolute and eager in its