274 The Unknown River. 



sumed ; the nature of it will be best gathered from the 

 etching. 



There are two little villages in the region where I 

 was now voyaging, about a mile apart, and bearing the 

 same name of Voudenay ; so, to know one from the 

 other, the inhabitants have called them Voudenay-l'Eglise 

 and Voudenay-le-Chateau. My first day's voyage was 

 from one of these villages to the other, total distance 

 one mile. The reader may laugh if he likes, but that is 

 about the proper degree of speed for an artist on his 

 travels. 



After dark, as I wished to get a few miles lower down 

 the stream, I determined, as the moon did not rise till 

 rather late, to continue the voyage by lamp-light. The 

 canoe was provided with a carriage-lamp for the pur- 

 pose, which was fixed in the forepart of the deck, and it 

 was found quite possible to pursue a very intricate and 

 sometimes even perilous navigation by the help of this 

 artificial light. Where the narrow river was most thickly 

 shaded on both sides by dense vegetation, the branches 

 meeting immediately overhead, and festooned with over- 

 hanging creepers, the lamp-light gave a strange beauty 

 to the scene ; and as the canoe floated somewhat rapidly 

 down this little green corridor, it seemed like a voyage 

 in fairyland. Every tiny leaf and spray, every slender 

 thread of stalk, came for one moment out of the black- 

 ness of night into the full brilliance of the lamp-light, 

 then passed into the darkness behind. An endless suc- 

 cession of this inexhaustible loveliness made the night 

 voyage one continual enchantment, and I was not sorry 



