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We seem to be approaching some town of old feudal times that has been left solitary and forgotten on the mountain side, outside of the current of modern life. But when we pass through the station we find ourselves suddenly transported to the side of the lake, where whole flotillas of large and small boats lie moored on the blue waters of a large harbor.
Finally, in the summer it was actually driven to impose internal taxes like those which, when imposed by Federalists, had savoured of tyranny. On the northern frontier, renewed efforts were made to collect a real army, and, with late comprehension of the necessities of the case, naval officers were sent to build flotillas to control Erie, Ontario, and Champlain.
We can scarcely detect any real distinction except a twofold one between vessels whose primary armament is the gun and vessels whose primary armament is the torpedo. But even here the existence of a type of cruiser designed to act with flotillas blurs the outline, while, as we have seen, the larger units of the flotilla are grading up to cruiser level.
Among the prisoners was a young French royalist named La Bourdonnais: when forced by the conscription to enter Napoleon's service, he chose to serve with the chaloupes "because of his conviction that all these flotillas were nothing but bugbears and would never attempt the invasion so much talked of and in which so few persons really believe."
The best amongst our bad admirals is certainly Truguet; but he was disgraced last year, and exiled twenty leagues from the coast, for having declared too publicly "that our flotillas would never be serviceable before our fleets were superior to yours, when they would become useless."
The two flotillas, with fluttering pennants and resounding music, and crowded with gayly-dressed and sanguine warriors, floated down the streams until they met, at the confluence of these rivers, near Nizni Novgorod. Here the two fleets, covering the Volga for many leagues, were united.
She saw the fang-edged skyline of lower Manhattan lifting its gray shafts through wet streamers of fog; she saw flotillas of squat ferry-boats shouldering their ways against the sullen heave of the river's tide-water; she heard the discordant shriek of their steam throats; she saw the tilting swoop of a hundred gulls, buffeting the wind; but she was conscious only of the vista of oily water widening between herself and him.
When the saw was still the water overflowed the "stop-logs" by the "spillway" into the pond below. But that mill race furnished more than power to the mill. It furnished besides much colourful romance to the life of the village youth of those early days. For down the mill race they ran their racing craft, jostling and screaming, urging with long poles their laggard flotillas to victory.
The pond by the Flagstaff is frequently very gay; there are carriages and horses, children with flotillas of white-sailed craft, and horses splashing knee-deep from end to end of the pond, an advantage much appreciated in the hot and thirsty summer. Away to the east stretches of rolling green form a joyous playground for all at holiday times, but are bare and arid compared with the West Heath.
As it was, the French got back the twenty thousand good seamen whom we had captured, and a fine dance they led us with their Boulogne flotillas and fleets of invasion before we were able to catch them again. My father, as I remember him best, was a tough, strong little man, of no great breadth, but solid and well put together.
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