My track was down the Rhône; I made the excursion ten or eleven years ago in the pleasantest season of the year. I took a courier with me and went from Geneva a couple of hours by rail to the blue little Lake Bourget, and spent the night in a mediæval castle on an island in that little lake. In the early morning our boat came for us. It was a roomy open boat fifteen or twenty feet long, with a single pair of long oars, and with it came its former owner, a sturdy big boatman. The boat was mine now; I think I paid five dollars for it. I was to pay the boatman a trifling daily wage and his keep, and he was to take us all the way down the Rhône to Marseilles. It was warm weather and very sunny, but we built a canvas arch, like a wagon cover, over the aftermost third of the boat, with a curtain at its rear which could be rolled up to let the breeze blow through, and I occupied that tent and was always comfortable. The sailor sat amidships and manned the oars, and the courier had the front third of the boat to himself. We crossed the lake and went winding down a narrow canal bordered by peasant houses and vineyards, and after about a league of this navigation we came in sight of the Rhône, a troubled gray stream which went tearing past the mouth of the peaceful canal at a racing gait. We emerged into it and laid in the oars. We could go fast enough in that current without artificial aid. During the first days we slipped along down the curving bends at a speed of about five miles an hour, but it slackened later. Our days were all about alike. About four in the afternoon we tied up at a village and I dined on the greensward in front of the inn by the water’s edge, on the choicest chickens, vegetables, fruit, butter, and bread, prepared in French perfection and served upon the whitest linen; and as a rule I had the friendly house cat and dog for guests and company and willing and able helpers. I slept in the inn; often in clean and satisfactory quarters, sometimes in the same room with the cows and the fleas. I breakfasted on the lawn in the morning with cat and dog again; then laid in a stock of grapes and other fruits gathered fresh from the garden and some bottles of red wine made on the premises, and at eight or nine we went floating down the river again. At noon we went ashore at a village, bought a freshly caught fish or two, had them broiled, got some bread and vegetables, and set sail again at once. We always lunched on board as we floated along. I spent my days reading books, making notes, smoking, and in other lazy and enchanting ways, and had the delightfulest ten-day voyage I have ever experienced. It took us ten days to float to Arles. There the current gave out and I closed the excursion and returned to Geneva by rail. It was twenty-eight miles to Marseilles, and we should have been obliged to row. That would not have been pleasure; it would have meant work for the sailor, and I do not like work even when another person does it.