An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery. 267 



many experiments for the carriage of plates, but none 

 succeeded so well as this. If the coppers had been all 

 of precisely the same dimensions, they might have been 

 carried in a grooved box, such as photographers use for 

 their glasses ; and this, no doubt, would have been a 

 considerable economy of space, and would, at the same 

 time, have saved the weight of all drawing-boards except 

 one.* 



Having screwed my sixty plates to a quantity of small 

 drawing-boards, I slipped these boards into several 

 grooved boxes ; each box provided with a lock and key. 

 I then calculated the probable length of the voyage, and, 

 having locked my boxes, sent them to inns at different 

 distances down the river, to await my arrival. Thus I 

 was never obliged to carry more than one box of plates 

 at a time. It is unnecessary to go into the detail of my 

 other preparations, which were of the kind now so well 

 known to canoe-men, and to all who take an interest in 

 canoe-travelling. 



Here is the little village from which the expedition 

 started. The canoe had been transported thither in a 

 cart, and as we arrived in the evening it was not con- 

 sidered advisable to begin the voyage till the following 

 day. So I dined at the little inn, and after dinner went 

 out to walk in the village by the shore of the narrow 

 rivulet I was to embark upon on the morrow. 



It was a clear, bright moonlight night (the etching, it 



* It is necessary, however, when plates are carried in a grooved box, 

 without being fixed to a drawing-board, to revarnish their edges before 

 biting. 



