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Updated: June 9, 2025
The men at the ends of the tow-lines scrambled part way up the shelving beach and braced themselves, then wrapped the ropes about their waists, like anchormen on a tug-of-war team. Their companions waded into the flood and fended the boats off the rocks. The wave came swiftly, lifting the skiffs high upon the bank, then it sucked them back amid a tangle of arms and legs.
It almost took the heart out of one to see returning prospectors or freighters in their long, narrow skiffs, sometimes assisted by a sail, come flying down the stream, who, when hailed as to the condition of the river above, invariably shouted back that it became more difficult.
In applying this invention to gigs, dingys, canoes, and skiffs, a somewhat different method is adopted.
A large window fronts my bed, and its casements being thrown open, gives me a vast prospect of ocean, uninterrupted except by the peaks of Caprea and the Cape of Sorento. I lay half an hour gazing on the smooth level waters, and listening to the confused voices of the fishermen, passing and repassing in light skiffs, which came and disappeared in an instant.
In the midst of these favored spots summer hotels will throw wide their glorious windows upon vistas that are like glimpses of fairy land. Along the beach numerous skiffs await those who are weary of towns; steam launches are there, and small barges for the transportation of picnic parties to undiscovered islands in the dim distance.
During our passage through the Skager-Rack we passed innumerable fleets of fishing-smacks, and often encountered the diminutive skiffs of the fishermen, with two or three amphibious occupants, buffeting about among the waves many miles from the shore. The weather had been steadily growing worse ever since our departure from Copenhagen.
Asia was not its home. Where did it go? Russian adventurers who rafted the coast of Siberia in crazy skiffs, related that the sea-beaver always disappeared northeastward, whence the spruce driftwood and dead whales with harpoons of strange hunters and occasionally wrecks of walrus-skin boats came washing from an unknown land.
Then there was a calling out from the other boat to know what was the matter, and an explanation; so that Sophia and Mr Walcot had to take refuge in mutual sympathy from universal censure. "The birds always quarrel with the boats boats of this make," explained the boatman; "because their enemies go out in skiffs to take them.
Below this bridge, as far as the eye can reach in the direction of the Gulf of Finland, the glittering waters of the Neva are alive with various kinds of shipping merchant vessels from all parts of the world; fishing smacks from Finland and Riga; lumber vessels from Tornea; wood-boats from the interior; Russian and Prussian steamers; row-boats, skiffs, and fancy colored canoes, with crews and passengers representing many nations of the earth, are in perpetual motion; and while the sight is bewildered by the variety of moving objects, the ears are confounded by the strange medley of languages.
And do you think I would be going and telling any one but yourself, Rob? Do you think I would be going and telling any one that was throwing the broken herring at me, and always a curse for me when I went near the skiffs, and not once a glass of whisky for an old man? Well, Rob, I will not ask you for a glass of whisky.
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