John MacGregor
A Thousand Miles in the Rob Roy Canoe on Rivers and Lakes of Europe
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4057664622495
Table of Contents
GOSSIP ASHORE ABOUT THINGS AFLOAT.
LIST OF STORES ON BOARD THE ROB ROY.
A List of SAMPSON LOW & CO.'S NEW WORKS.
LITERATURE, WORKS OF REFERENCE, AND EDUCATION.
INDIA, AMERICA, AND THE COLONIES.
TRADE, AGRICULTURE, DOMESTIC ECONOMY, ETC.
PREFACE.
The voyage about to be described was made last Autumn in a small Canoe, with a double paddle and sails, which the writer managed alone.
The route led sometimes over mountains and through forests and plains, where the boat had to be carried or dragged.
The waters navigated were as follows:—
The Rivers Thames, Sambre, Meuse, Rhine, Main, Danube, Reuss, Aar, Ill, Moselle, Meurthe, Marne, and Seine.
The Lakes Titisee, Constance, Unter See, Zurich, Zug, and Lucerne, together with six canals in Belgium and France, and two expeditions in the open sea of the British Channel.
Temple, London,
April 25, 1866.
THE AUTHOR'S PROFITS FROM THE FIRST AND SECOND EDITIONS, WERE GIVEN TO THE ROYAL NATIONAL LIFE-BOAT INSTITUTION AND TO THE SHIPWRECKED MARINERS' SOCIETY.
CHAPTER I.
Canoe Travelling—Other Modes—The Rob Roy—Hints—Tourists—The Rivers—The Dress—I and We—The Election.
The object of this book is to describe a new mode of travelling on the Continent, by which new people and things are met with, while healthy exercise is enjoyed, and an interest ever varied with excitement keeps fully alert the energies of the mind.
Some years ago the Water Lily was rowed by four men on the Rhine and on the Danube, and its "log" delighted all readers. Afterwards, the boat Water Witch laboured up French rivers, and through a hundred tedious locks on the Bâle canal. But these and other voyages of three or five men in an open boat were necessarily very limited. In the wildest parts of the best rivers the channel is too narrow for oars, or, if wide, it is too shallow for a row-boat; and the tortuous passages, the rocks and banks, the weeds and snags, the milldams, barriers, fallen trees, rapids, whirlpools, and waterfalls that constantly occur on a river winding among hills, make those very parts where the scenery is wildest and best to be quite unapproachable in an open boat, for it would be swamped by the sharp waves, or upset over the sunken rocks which it is utterly impossible for a steersman to see.
But these very things, which are obstacles or dangers to the "pair oar," become interesting features to the voyager in a covered canoe. For now, as he sits in his little bark, he looks forward, and not backward. He sees all