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He had worked in various capacities on board of steamers, canal-boats, sloops, and schooners, and in five years had visited every part of the lake from Whitehall to St. Johns. Speaking technically, his bump of locality was large, and he was as familiar with the navigation of the lake as any pilot on its waters.
I think it was all the more interesting and instructive because we went for most of the way on one of the slow, old-fashioned canal-boats. This gave us an opportunity of seeing and studying the real life of the people in the country districts.
Some elevators in these centres can store as much as a million or more bushels each. They are built of steel and equipped with steam-power or electricity. The wheat is taken from grain-laden vessels or cars, carried up into the elevator, and deposited in various bins, according to its grade. On the opposite side of the elevator the wheat is reloaded into cars or canal-boats.
Out on the wharf a double "hoister," working by steam, and able to pick up and swing a hundred tons, is used in handling the materials of the works. The dry-docks are, in winter, a singular spectacle. They are a vast hospital of interesting invalids, the patients being steamers, barges and canal-boats.
A long string of canal-boats, potted plants flowering saucily in their neatly curtained windows, proprietors expansively smoking on deck, in the bosoms of their very large families, was being mothered up-stream by two funny, clucking tugs. Behind the brigantine a travel-worn Atlantic liner was scolding itself hoarse about the right of way.
We were among cows and barns and homely rail-fences, and that was comfort; so we strolled contentedly through the pasture, found a river, I believe it was the Hudson; at any rate, Halicarnassus said so, though I don't imagine he knew; but he would take oath it was Acheron rather than own up to ignorance on any point whatever, watched the canal-boats and boatmen go down, marvelled at the arbor-vitae trees growing wild along the river-banks, green, hale, stately, and symmetrical, against the dismal mental background of two little consumptive shoots bolstered up in our front yard at home, and dying daily, notwithstanding persistent and affectionate nursing with "flannels and rum," and then we went back to the blackberry-station and inquired whether there was nothing celebrated in the vicinity to which visitors of received Orthodox creed should dutifully pay their respects, and were gratified to learn that we were but a few miles from Jane McCrea and her Indian murderers.
At the confluence of the Cherwell and Isis we saw a good many boats, belonging to the students of the various colleges; some of them being very large and handsome barges, capable of accommodating a numerous party, with room on board for dancing and merry-making. Some of them are calculated to be drawn by horses, in the manner of canal-boats; others are propellable by oars.
"In burghers' mansions, peasants' cottages, mechanics' back-parlors; on board herring-smacks, canal-boats, and East Indiamen; in shops, counting-rooms, farm-yards, guard-rooms, alehouses; on the exchange, in the tennis court, on the mall; at banquets, at burials, christenings, or bridals; wherever and whenever human creatures met each other, there was ever to be found the fierce wrangle of Remonstrant and Contra-Remonstrant, the hissing of red-hot theological rhetoric, the pelting of hostile texts.
Down her black sides by ropes and chain-plates, to the wrecked and sinking canal-boats, some with bags or chests, some without, came eager men, who climbed to the dock, and answering no questions of the gathering crowd of dock-loungers, scattered into the side-streets.
When I got her three feet from the bottom, I should move her toward the shore till she grounded." "What then?" asked Ben. "I should sink the canal-boats again, pump them out once more, and thus raise her three feet more; but it would take about three days every time we lifted her three feet. Ben, I think we could get her to the top of the water in about a fortnight by your plan.
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