The steamer reached Liverpool June 20th, the passage having occupied twenty-six days, upon eighteen of which she had used her paddles.Ason of Mr.Dodd once told me of the sensation produced by the arrival of a smoking vessel on the coast of Ireland, and how Lieutenant John Bowie, of the king's cutter Kite, sent a boat-load of sailors to board the Savannah to assist her crew to extinguish the fires of what his Majesty's officers supposed to be a burning ship.
The Savannah, after visiting Liverpool, continued her voyage on July 23d, and reached St.
Petersburg in safety.Leaving the latter port on October 10th, this adventurous craft completed the round voyage upon her arrival at Savannah, November 30th.
I pulled up the Savannah until within five miles of the city, and then left the river on its south side, where old rice-plantations are first met, and entered St.Augustine Creek, which is the steamboat thoroughfare of the inland route to Florida.
Just outside the city of Savannah, near its beautiful cemetery, where tall trees with their graceful drapery of Spanish moss screen from wind and sun the quiet resting-places of the dead, my canoe was landed, and stored in a building of the German Greenwich Shooting Park, where Mr.
John Hellwig, in a most hospitable manner, cared for it and its owner.
While awaiting the arrival of letters at the Savannah post-office, many of the ladies of that beautiful city came out to see the paper canoe.
They seemed to have the mistaken idea that my little craft had come from the distant Dominion of Canada over the Atlantic Ocean.They also looked upon the voyage of the paper canoe as a very sentimental thing, while the canoeist had found it an intensely practical affair, though occasionally relieved by incidents of romantic or amusing character.As the ladies clustered round the boat while it rested upon the centre-table of Mr.Hellwig's parlor, they questioned me freely.
"Tell us," they said, "what were your thoughts while you rowed upon the broad ocean in the lonely hours of night?"Though unwilling to break their pleasing illusions, I was obliged to inform them that a sensible canoeist is usually enjoying his needed rest in some camp, or sleeping in some sheltered place, -- under a roof if possible, -- after it is too dark to travel in safety; and as to ocean travelling, the canoe had only once entered upon the Atlantic Ocean, and then through a mistake.
"But what subjects occupy your thoughts as you row, and row, and row all day by yourself;in this little ship?" a motherly lady inquired.
"To tell you honestly, ladies, I must say that when I am in shallow watercourses, with the tides usually ebbing at the wrong time for my convenience, I am so full of anxiety about getting wrecked on the reefs of sharp coon-oysters, that I am wishing myself in deep water; and when my route forces me into the deep water of sounds, and the surface becomes tossed into wild disorder by strong currents and stronger winds, and the porpoises pay me their little attentions, chasing the canoe, flapping their tails, and showing their sportive dispositions, I think longingly of those same shoal creeks, and wish I was once more in their shallow waters.""We ladies have prayed for your safety," said a kind-looking German lady, "and we will pray that your voyage may have a happy and successful end."When the ladies left, two Irish laborers, dressed in sombre black, with high hats worn with the air of dignity, examined the boat.There was an absence of the sparkle of fun usually seen in the Irish face, for this was a serious occasion.
They did not see any romance or sentiment in the voyage, but took a broad, geographical view of the matter.They stood silently gazing at the canoe with the same air of solemnity they would have given a corpse.Then one addressed the other, as though the owner of the craft was entirely out of the hearing of their conversation.
Said No.1, "And what did I tell ye, Pater?""And so ye did," replied No.2."And didn't Isay so?" continued No.1."Of course ye did;and wasn't me of the same mind, to be sure?"responded No.2."Yes, I told ye as how it is the men of these times is greater than the men of ould times.There was the great Coolumbus, who came over in three ships to see Americky.What did he know about paper boats? Nothing at all, at all.He cum over in big ships, while this young feller has cum all the way from Canada.I tell ye the men of ould times was not up to the men of these times.Thin there's Captain Boyton, who don't use any boat or ship at all, at all, but goes aswimming in rubber clothes to keep him dry all over the Atlantic Oshin.Jis' look, man, how he landed on the shores of ould Ireland not long since.
Now what's Coolumbus, or any other man of the past ages, to him? Coolumbus could not hold a candle to Boyton! No, I tell ye agen that the men of this age is greater than the men of the past ages." "And," broke in No.2, "there's a Britisher who's gone to the River Niles in a canoe." "The River Niles!" hotly exclaimed No.1; "don't waste your breath on that thing.
It's no new thing at all, at all.It was diskivered a long time a go, and nobody cares a fig for it now." "Yet," responded No.2, "some of those old-times people were very enterprising.There was that great traveller Robinson Crusoe: ye must confess he was a great man for his time." "The same who wint to the South Sea Islands and settled there?" asked the first biographer."The "very same man," replied No.2, with animation.
This instructive conversation was here interrupted by a party of ladies and gentlemen, who in turn gave their views of canoe and canoeist.
