Fairly in the broad river again the Rob Roy came to Neuilly, and it was plain that my Sunday rest had enabled over thirty miles to be accomplished without any fatigue at the end. With some hesitation we selected an inn on the water-side. The canoe was taken up to it and put on a table in a summer-house, while my own bed was in a garret where one could not stand upright--the only occasion where I have been badly housed; and pray let no one be misled by the name of this abode--"The Jolly Rowers." Next day the river flowed fast again, and numerous islands made the channels difficult to find. The worst of these difficulties is that you cannot prepare for them. No map gives any just idea of your route--the people on the river itself are profoundly ignorant of its navigation. For instance, in starting, my landlord told me that in two hours we should reach Paris. After ten miles an intelligent man said, "Distance from Paris? it is six hours from here;" while a third informed me a little further on, "It is just three leagues and a half from this spot." The banks were now dotted with villas, and numerous pleasure-boats were moored at neat little stairs. The vast number of these boats quite astonished me, and the more so as very few of them were ever to be seen in actual use. The French are certainly ingenious in their boat-making, but more of ingenuity than of practical exercise is seen on the water. On several rivers we remarked the "walking machine," in which a man can walk on the water by fixing two small boats on his feet. A curious mode of rowing with your face to the bows has lately been invented by a Frenchman, and it is described in the Appendix. We stopped to breakfast at a new canal cutting, and as there were many _gamins_ about, I fastened a stone to my painter and took the boat out into the middle of the river, and so left her moored within sight of the arbour, where I sat, and also within sight of the ardent-eyed boys who gazed for hours with wistful looks on the tiny craft and its fluttering flag. Their desire to handle as well as to see is only natural for these little fellows, and, therefore, if the lads behave well, I always make a point of showing them the whole affair quite near, after they have had to abstain from it so long as a forbidden pleasure.