After great rains when the current is rapid, the whole is entrusted to its propelling force, otherwise several hundred persons are employed in rowing, who move their oars at a given word of command. The whole of these wonderful moving masses is under the entire direction of a governor or superintendant, and several officers under him. Sometimes they are months in performing their voyage, in consequence of the water being low, in which case they are obliged to wait till the river is swelled by the rains. In this manner they float from the _high_ to the _low_ countries, and upon their arrival at the place of destination, the whole is broken up, and finds a ready market. About twelve of them annually arrive at Dort, in Holland, in the months of July and August, where these German timber-merchants having converted their floats into good Dutch ducats, return to their own country with their families, to enjoy the produce of their labour and enterprize. The clergy and monks in Andernach used to be, to use a good humoured homely expression of a late illustrious statesman, upon an application made to him for a place under his administration “as thick as five in a bed;” beside six vicars belonging to a large parish church, there were no less than five crowded convents, and the population did not exceed four thousand souls: the convents are now converted into garrisons for French soldiers, and storehouses for tradesmen. After viewing the city, I set off on the road to Coblentz, with a view of meeting the boat at the place appointed, and after walking about two miles, I lost all traces of the river; however, observing about three parts of a mile off, the tops of a long semicircular line of poplars, I concluded the river flowed by them, and I accordingly endeavoured to penetrate to the bank through a large willow wood, in which I soon lost myself. At last, however, I succeeded in forcing a way into a little footpath, in pursuing which I suddenly came upon a Frenchman, poorly clothed in green, with a book in his hand; he courteously addressed me, remarked that I looked rather warm, and conducted me to a recess in the wood, close to the water, where there was a bed of straw and a gun: at first I regarded him as a robber, but he soon gave me to understand that he was a link in a vast chain, composed of forty thousand soldiers, placed in this sort of ambuscade at the distance of a gun shot from each other, by the orders of the government of France, to guard the left bank of the Rhine from smugglers; and that to prevent contraband practices, no boat is suffered to pass either up or down the river after sunset, without being fired upon; that they are always clothed in a sombre dress, to prevent observation, and are concealed in this manner wherever the sides of the river will admit of it. Upon my informing him that I had lost my way and my boat, he politely assured me that it had not yet ascended the