An Inland Voyage Section 8 - On the Sambre Canalised to Landrecies

Robert Louis Stevenson (0:00)

Section 8 Of An Inland Voyage This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit librivox.org. Recording by Lyn Thompson An Inland Voyage by Robert Louis Stevenson Section 8 On the Sombre Canalized To Londressey In the morning, when we came downstairs, the landlady pointed out to us two pails of water behind the street door. Voila de l'eau pour vous de barbouiller, says she, and so there we made a shift to wash ourselves, while Madame Guilia brushed the family boots on the outer doorstep, and Monsieur Hector, whistling cheerily, arranged some small goods for the day's campaign in a portable chest of drawers which formed a part of his baggage. Meanwhile, the child was letting off waterloo crackers all over the floor. I wonder, by the by, what they call waterloo crackers in France. Perhaps, Alsthalips crackers.

There is a great deal in the point of view. Do you remember the Frenchman who, travelling by way of Southampton, was put down in Waterloo Station and had to drive across Waterloo Bridge? He had a mind to go home again, it seems. Pont itself is on the river, but whereas it is ten minutes' walk from Carte by dry land, it is six weary kilometres by water. We left our bags at the inn and walked to our canoes through the wet orchards unencumbered. Some of the children were there to see us off, but we were no longer the mysterious beings of the night before. A departure is much less romantic than an unexplained arrival in the golden evening. Although we might be greatly taken at a ghost's first appearance, we should behold him vanish with comparative equanimity. The good folk of the inn at Pont, when we called there for the bags, were overcome with marvelling. At sight of these two dainty little boats, with a fluttering Union Jack on each, and all the varnish shining from the sponge, they began to perceive that they had entertained angels unawares. The lady stood upon the bridge, probably lamenting she had charged so little. The sun ran to and fro, and called out to the neighbours to enjoy the sight, and we paddled away from quite a crowd of rapt observers. These gentlemen peddlers, indeed! Now you see their quality too late. The whole day was showery with occasional drenching plumps. We were soaked to the skin, then partially dried in the sun, then soaked once more. But there were some calm intervals and one notably, when we were skirting the forests of Mormal, a sinister name to the ear, but a place most gratifying to sight and smell. It looked solemn along the riverside, drooping its boughs into the water, and piling them up aloft into a wall of leaves. What is a forest but a city of nature's own, full of hardy and innocuous living things, where there is nothing dead and nothing made with the hands, but the citizens themselves are the houses and public monuments? There is nothing so much alive and yet so quiet as a woodland. And a pair of people swinging past in canoes feel very small and bustling by comparison.

And surely of all smells in the world the smell of many trees is the sweetest and most fortifying. The sea has a rude, pistilling sort of odour that takes you in the nostrils like snuff, and carries with it a fine sentiment of open water and tall ships. But the smell of a forest, which comes nearest to this intonic quality, surpasses it by many degrees in the quality of softness. Again, the smell of the sea has little of variety, but the smell of a forest is infinitely changeful. It varies with the hour of the day, not in strength merely, but in character, and the different sorts of trees, as you go from one zone of the wood to another, seem to live among different kinds of atmosphere.

Usually the resin of the fir predominates, but some woods are more coquettish in their habits, and the breath of the forest of Mormal, as it came aboard upon us that showery afternoon, was perfumed with nothing less delicate than sweetbriar.

I wish our way had always lain among woods, trees of a most civil society, an old oak that has been growing where he stands since before the Reformation, taller than many spires, more stately than the greater part of mountains, and yet a living thing liable to sicknesses and death like you and me. Is not that in itself a speaking lesson in history? But acres on acres full of such patriarchs continuously rooted, their green tops billowing in the wind, their stalwart younglings pushing up about their knees. A whole forest, healthy and beautiful, giving colour to the light, giving perfume to the air. What is this but the most imposing piece in nature's repertory?