way the heavy reels, made the
canoes fast to the side of the house, embarked the three horses on
the front deck, and then dropped down with the current, swinging along
through the rapids, and drifting slowly through the still places, now
grounding on a hidden rock, and now sweeping around a sharp curve,
until at length we saw the roofs of Metapedia and the ugly bridge of the
railway spanning the river. There we left our floating house, awkward
and helpless, like some strange relic of the flood, stranded on the
shore. And as we climbed the bank we looked back and wondered whether
Noah was sorry when he said good-bye to his ark.

1888.

ALPENROSEN AND GOAT'S MILK

"Nay, let me tell you, there be many that have forty times our estates,
that would give the greatest part of it to be healthful and cheerful
like us; who, with the expense of a little money, have ate, and drank,
and laughed, and angled, and sung, and slept securely; and rose next
day, and cast away care, and sung, and laughed, and angled again; which
are blessings rich men cannot purchase with all their money."--IZAAK
WALTON: The Complete Angler.

A great deal of the pleasure of life lies in bringing together things
which have no connection. That is the secret of humour--at least so we
are told by the philosophers who explain the jests that other men have
made--and in regard to travel, I am quite sure that it must be illogical
in order to be entertaining. The more contrasts it contains, the better.

Perhaps it was some philosophical reflection of this kind that brought
me to the resolution, on a certain summer day, to make a little journey,
as straight as possible, from the sea-level streets of Venice to the
lonely, lofty summit of a Tyrolese mountain, called, for no earthly
reason that I can discover, the Gross-Venediger.

But apart from the philosophy of the matter, which I must confess to
passing over very superficially at the time, there were other and more
cogent reasons for wanting to go from Venice to the Big Venetian. It
was the first of July, and the city on the sea was becoming tepid. A
slumbrous haze brooded over canals and palaces and churches. It was
difficult to keep one's conscience awake to Baedeker and a sense of
moral obligation; Ruskin was impossible, and a picture-gallery was a
penance. We floated lazily from one place to another, and decided that,
after all, it was too warm to go in. The cries of the gondoliers, at
the canal