"Ah," said I inwardly, "had I only listened to that worthy dame's entreaties this morning to take good provision for the day!" She had smiled like the best of mothers, and timidly asked to be allowed to touch my watch-chain, "it was so _schon_," so beautiful to see. But, oddly enough, we had taken no solid food on board to-day, being so impatient to get off when the wind was strong and fair. The rapid pace then brought us to Ehingen, the village I had marked on the map for this night's rest. But now we came there it was found to be _too soon_--I could not stop for the day with such a splendid breeze inviting progress; nor would it do to leave the boat on the bank and go to the village to eat, for it was too far from the river, and so the current and sails must hurry us on as before. Now and then I asked some gazing agriculturist on the bank where the nearest houses were, but he never could understand that I meant _nearest, and also close to the river_; so the end of every discussion was that he said, "Ya vol," which means in Yankee tongue, "That's so"; in Scottish, "Hoot, aye"; in Irish, "Troth, an' it is"; and in French, "C'est vrai"; but then none of this helps one a bit. I therefore got first ravenous and then faint, and after mounting the bank to see the turns of the river in advance, I actually fell asleep under a tree. The wind had quite subsided when I awoke, and then quaffed deep draughts of water and paddled on. The banks were now of yellow mud, and about eight or ten feet high, quite straight up from the water, just like those on the Nile, and several affluent streams ran from the plain to join the river. Often, indeed, I saw a church tower right ahead, and laboured along to get there, but after half-a-mile the stream would turn sharp round to one side, and still more and more round, and at last the tower once in front was directly behind us. The explanation of this tormenting peculiarity was simply this,--that the villages were carefully built _away_ from the river bank because it is a bad foundation, and is washed away as new channels are formed by the flood. When the light began to fail I took a good look at the map, and serpentine bends were marked on it plain enough indeed, but only in one-half of their actual number; and, moreover, I saw that in the forest we had now entered there would be no suitable villages at all. The overhanging trees made a short twilight soon deepen into night; and to add to the interest the snags suddenly became numerous, and some of them waved about in the current, as they do on the Upper Mississippi, when the tenacious mud holds down the roots merely by its weight. All this made it necessary to paddle slowly and with great caution, and to cross always to the slack side of the stream instead of by one's usual course, which, in descending, is to keep with the rapid current.