An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery, 289 



little hut, and the free range of the wild forest, and 

 the fresh, high air, and the silence and the calm, and 

 the healthy days of toil, and the lonely evening walks 

 about the hill, and the vast, illimitable horizons. Who- 

 ever has once known this passion for wild Nature never, 

 whilst health lasts, can lose it. There comes upon him 

 every year, first a vague uneasiness, then a craving and 

 longing for something, he knows not what, and then he 

 begins to dream at night of regions beautiful and wild. 

 The streets of the town, even the spacious country- 

 house, begin to feel like prisons, and he wants to get 

 out into the forest, or on the mountain, or float on flow- 

 ing rivers and tossing seas. 



In consequence of having etched the little plate which 

 the reader has just seen, I had to paddle some miles 

 after sunset, and did not reach the next village until 

 darkness had fairly set in. The river, fortunately, pre- 

 sented few of those dangers which had been so frequent 

 in the earlier part of its course. There were a few 

 rapids here and there, but not dangerous rapids, and 

 now and then one of those disturbed places called * re- 

 mous,' produced by sudden alterations in the form of the 

 river's bed, often at a considerable depth. On the whole, 

 however, the river was safer here than anywhere else on 

 its whole course until it reached the plain of the Loire, 

 and this will be readily understood after a few words on 

 the geology of the district. The basin of Autun is a 

 wide valley hollowed in the rock, formerly a lake-bed, 

 and afterwards filled to the brim with alluvial deposits. 

 It is through these deposits that the river cuts its serpen- 



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