For this journey in a canoe has been interesting, agreeable, and useful, though its incidents may not be realized by reading what has now been described. The sensation of novelty, freedom, health, and variety all day and every day was what cannot be recited. The close acquaintance with the people of strange lands, and the constant observation of nature around, and the unremitting attention necessary for progress, all combine to make a voyage of this sort improving to the mind thus kept alert, while the body thoroughly enjoys life when regular hard exercise in the open air dissipates the lethargy of these warmer climes. These were my thoughts as I came to the Seine and found a cool bank to lie upon under the trees, with my boat gently rocking in the ripples of the stream below, and the nearer sound of a great city telling that Paris was at hand. "Here," said I, "and now is my last hour of life savage and free. Sunny days; alone, but not solitary; worked, but not weary"--as in a dream the things, places, and men I had seen floated before my eyes half closed. The panorama was wide, and fair to the mind's eye; but it had a tale always the same as it went quickly past--that vacation was over, and work must begin. Up, then, for this is not a life of mere enjoyment. Again into the harness of "polite society," the hat, the collar, the braces, the gloves, the waistcoat, the latch-key--perhaps, the razor--certainly the umbrella. How every joint and limb will rebel against these manacles, but they must be endured! The gradual approach to Paris by gliding down the Seine was altogether a new sensation. By diligence, railway, or steamer, you have nothing like it--not certainly by walking into Paris along a dusty road. For now we are smoothly carried on a wide and winding river, with nothing to do but to look and to listen while the splendid panorama majestically unfolds. Villas thicken, gardens get smaller as houses are closer, trees get fewer as walls increase. Barges line the banks, commerce and its movement, luxury and its adornments, spires and cupolas grow out of the dim horizon, and then bridges seem to float towards me, and the hum of life gets deeper and busier, while the pretty little prattling of the river stream yields to the roar of traffic, and to that indescribable thrill which throbs in the air around this the capital of the Continent, the centre of the politics, the focus of the pleasure and the splendour of the world.