254 Preface to the American Edition. 



stroyed. Another piece of luck was, that I had 

 no time, nor acid, to bite the plates there and then, 

 and so innocently fancied that they were all very 

 pretty (an etching done according to the old nega- 

 tive process always looks pretty when it is first 

 drawn, because the lines glitter charmingly on the 

 black ground), and felt agreeably encouraged, the 

 evil hour of disappointment being put off until my 

 return to home and the printing-press, which told 

 the painful truth with a frankness equal to that 

 of the most unpleasantly honest dilettante in 

 England. 



It may interest readers who share the author's 

 boating propensities to know that the voyage was 

 undertaken in a canoe fabricated by his own hands 

 of paper, on a light skeleton of laths. The whole 

 of the voyage was accomplished in this fragile 

 craft ; but it is only honest to add that she became 

 leaky before it was over, and was condemned as 

 unriverworthy at the end. Not that I think, even 

 now, that paper is a bad material for canoes, but I 

 had not then (1866) hit upon the right material 

 for gluing it. I employed the enduit Ruolz, which 

 takes about twelve months to harden, and I had 

 not patience to wait the twelve months ; so the 



