The rain lasted through the night but Wednesday, July 26th, dawned with clear skies. We prepared to depart early, but first stocked "Sometub" with provisions and fuel, Brunswick being the last large town on the canal on the way to Washington. Before us for a distance of nearly 50 miles lay a stretch of sparsely settled country. From Brunswick to Point of Rocks the Baltimore and Ohio railroad runs close beside the towpath and in the early morning, "Sometub" was greeted several times by passengers on the observation cars of the Royal Blue express trains which dashed by at a mile-a-minute speed. We wondered if the people who were fluttering handkerchiefs and waving hats envied us. It was while riding on the observation car several years ago on this same route that we had planned our voyage. In its realization we regretted that more vacation tourists could not share the pleasure of our trip over the mountains--by water. We did not stop to consider that the majority of summer travelers desire speed, luxury and the least discomfort and would balk at the petty annoyances we endured through an obstinate motor and the omniesence of Jupiter Pluvius. Under the shadow of old Catoctin mountain we passed the Point of Rocks, famous in the Civil War as the place where Lee's army crossed for the invasion of Maryland in the Antietam campaign. A few miles beyond the course of the river turns from southeast to southwest and we sheered off sharply from the railroad. We crossed on the famous stone aqueduct over the Monocacy river. The character of the scenery changed quite as preceptibly as the direction of the stream. Through the drooping branches of the trees we saw on the north the rugged outlines of old Sugar Loaf peak and across the Potomac the undulating ridge of the southern spur of Catoctin, and when heights faded in the blue haze of a midsummer day, we bade farewell to the mountains. Henceforth our way ran through the lowlands down to the sea, the hills and river bluffs reaching an altitude of only a few hundred feet. At Edwards Ferry we saw the wooded face of Ball's Bluff which gave name to a Civil War conflict which was second only to Bull Run in causing discomfiture to the people of the North. In this little fight the country lost a notable figure in the person of General Edward D. Baker, first United States senator from Oregon. For miles along this portion of our route we ran without seeing a human habitation. A dense strip of woodland concealed the river from view and bluffs or marshy thickets interposed between the canal and the country to the north. Occasionally through the trees we caught a fleeting glimpse of beautiful meadows and cornfields of the Maryland farmlands, but these vistas were rare.