In cases of this sort I usually got ashore to reconnoitre, and having calculated the angle at which we must enter the passage obliquely (down a fall, and across its stream), I managed to get successfully through several of these strange barriers. We came at length to one which, on examination, I had to acknowledge was "impassable," for the chains were slack, and there was only an inch or two of "law" on either side of the difficult course through them. [Illustration: "The Chain Barrier."] However, a man happened to see my movements and the canoe, and soon he called some dozen of his fellow navvies from their work to look at the navigator. The captain was therefore incited by these spectators to try the passage, and I mentally resolved at any rate to be cool and placid, however much discomfiture was to be endured. The boat was steered to the very best of my power, but the bow of the canoe swerved an inch in the swift oblique descent, and instantly it got locked in the chains, while I quietly got out (whistling an air in slow time), and then, in the water with all my clothes on, I steadily lifted the boat through the iron network and got into her, dripping wet, but trying to behave as if it were only the usual thing. The navvies cheered a long and loud bravo! but I felt somewhat ashamed of having yielded to the desire for ignorant applause, and when finally round the next corner I got out and changed my wet things, a wiser and a sadder man, but dry. This part of the river is in the heart of the champagne country, and all the softly swelling hills about are thickly covered by vineyards. The vine for champagne is exceedingly small, and grows round one stick, and the hillside looks just like a carding-brush, from the millions of these little sharp-pointed rods upright in the ground and close together, without any fence whatever between the innumerable lots. The grape for champagne is always red, and never white, so they said, though "white grapes are grown for eating." During the last two months few people have consumed more grapes in this manner than the chief mate of the Rob Roy canoe. On one of these hills we noticed the house of Madame Clicquot, whose name has graced many a cork of champagne bottles and of bottles not champagne.