But it was a shame to be a phantom ship too often, and it was far more amusing to go right into the middle of these people, who knew nothing about the canoe, who had never seen a boat, and never met a foreigner in their lives. Thus, when a waterfall was found too high to "shoot," or a wide barrier made it advisable to take the boat by land, I used to walk straight into the hayfields, pushing the boat point foremost through a hedge, or dragging her steadily over the wet newly-mown grass in literal imitation of the American craft which could go "wherever there was a heavy dew." On such occasions the amazement of the untaught clowns, beholding suddenly such an apparition, was beyond all description. Some even ran away, very often children cried outright, and when I looked gravely on the ground as I marched and dragged the boat, and then suddenly stopped in their midst with a hearty laugh and an address in English, the whole proceeding may have appeared to them at least as strange as it did to me. [Illustration: "In the Hayfields."] The water of the river all at once became here of a pale white colour, and I was mourning that my pretty scenes below were clouded; but in about thirty miles the pebbly deeps appeared again, and the stream resumed its charming limpid clearness. This matter of dark or bright water is of some importance, because, when it is clear you can easily estimate after a little experience the general depth, even at some distance, by the shades and hues of the water, while the sunk rocks, big stones, and other particular obstacles are of course more visible then.