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Updated: June 28, 2025
Hospice stretches for fully three miles out into the bay, as green as an emerald, with some twenty pleasure-boats usually clustering about its shores, for the cork woods of St. Hospice are famous for picnics and merrymaking, and its little hotel is renowned throughout Europe for its fish-dinners.
The yacht was attended by a squadron of nine vessels, the Trinity House steamer, and a packet, besides being followed for some distance, in spite of the unpropitious weather, by innumerable little pleasure-boats. The voyage was both tedious and trying, the sea was rough, and the royal voyagers were ill.
Here were the frail papyrus bari, constructed like a raft and no more concave than a long bow; the huge cedar-masted cangias, flat-bottomed and slow-moving; the ancient dhow with its shapeless tent-cabin aft; the ponderous cattle barges and freight vessels built of rough-hewn logs; the light passenger skiffs; and lastly, the sumptuous pleasure-boats.
Egypt sends fine linen, one of her best known products sometimes, no doubt, plain, but often embroidered with bright patterns, and employed as such embroidered fabrics were also in Egypt, for the sails of pleasure-boats.
The night had fallen already when I reached the water-side, at a place where many pleasure-boats are moored and ready for hire; and as I went along a stony path, between wood and water, a strong wind blew in gusts from the far end of the lake.
Our friend Bob Jakin had, with Mumps's tacit consent, taken not only a wife about eight months ago, but also one of those queer old houses, pierced with surprising passages, by the water-side, where, as he observed, his wife and mother could keep themselves out of mischief by letting out two "pleasure-boats," in which he had invested some of his savings, and by taking in a lodger for the parlor and spare bedroom.
Here is a shining, winding little lake, with fairy-like pleasure-boats upon it, and graceful swans slowly sailing over the clear, blue waves, and looking like the reflection of small white clouds, floating in the sky above. Virginia Water is the play-ground of royalty.
I remember, when we came into L'Isle Adam, for instance, how we met dozens of pleasure-boats outing it for the afternoon, and there was nothing to distinguish the true voyager from the amateur, except, perhaps, the filthy condition of my sail. The company in one boat actually thought they recognized me for a neighbour. Was there ever anything more wounding? All the romance had come down to that.
All round the coasts of Europe that morning banjos were ringing, voices were bawling and singing, children were playing in the sun, pleasure-boats went to and fro; the common abundant life of the time, unsuspicious of all dangers that gathered darkly against it, flowed on its cheerful aimless way. In the cities men fussed about their businesses and engagements.
Breakfast was served on deck, under an awning, in sight of the mountains, the green islands, the fringe of breaking sea in the distant opening, the shimmer and sparkle of the harbor, the white sails of pleasure-boats, the painted canoes, the schooners and coal-boats and steamers swinging at anchor just enough to make all the scene alive.
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