little, took short naps and made ourselves absolutely comfortable. Our only effort was to keep on the shady side of the boat, for the weather was the hottest we had endured. As a remedy for tired nerves I can testify to the curative qualities of canalboating.

The skipper was a man of parts. He had run the canal for more than 20 years. He had walked every inch of the towpath from Cumberland to Washington every hour of the day and night and he declared that he could pace those 184 miles with his eyes blindfolded. He recognized every hill and house and tree and could tell their history. He knew all the neighborhood gossip, and all the neighbors knew him.

Toward the end of the drowsy afternoon we floated into the little village of Four Locks which takes its name from the fact that a chain of four locks are here. No. 18 cast us off and we prepared to paddle through. To our surprise the motor condescended to run. At the time I was ready to believe that it heard the mule driver's sublime cussing and was frightened into obedience.

With the motor running again we soon passed No. 18 and snorted off around a sharp bend, through Two Locks where we were lowered into the waters of the Potomac. I say "snorted" advisedly. "Sometub" exhibited colt-like behavior when unleashed from the slow-moving canal craft. The towpath follows the northern bank of the river and the boats hug the shore closely, but we careened far out into the stream. "Sometub" had found a nautical playground more spacious than it had ever enjoyed before.

After a two-mile run on the river we entered another lock and once more were confined to the comparatively narrow channel of the canal. We found all conditions favorable and at sunset we crossed the great stone aqueduct over the winding Conococheague and a few minutes later tied up at the Williamsport lock.

I was now on familiar ground. Eleven years before I had visited historic Williamsport in quest of newspaper "feature stories," and a decade had witnessed but little change in the place. In the early days of the Federal government Williamsport was a pretentious bidder as the seat for the national capital. In the Civil War it was a sort of Pryzmyl, having been taken and retaken by the armies of both the north and the south, but the town itself was of no importance except as the key to strategic positions beyond. Here in June, 1863, the vanguard of Lee's conquering legions crossed the Potomac when they swept down the Shenandoah and crossed triumphantly into Pennsylvania, and here less than a month later their ragged columns made a bold stand against Meade's victorious forces while the retreating Confederates waited for the flood to subside so that they could withdraw into Virginia. Along the street that leads down to the river are many of the old houses whose walls resounded with the tread of those valiant armies—Union and Confederate. In those houses, too, many a soldier suffered the agony of wounds received in the desperate charges at Gettysburg. Of those southern heroes who raced with death from that immortal field, scores gave up their lives here in sight of their native Virginia hills.

Williamsport today is another of those outposts for supplying alcoholic drinks to bleary-eyed pilgrims from West Virginia and in consequence does not afford hotel accommodations for the ordinary traveler. After trying in vain to get dinner, we boarded a trolley car and 40 minutes later reached Hagerstown where we stopped for the night, enjoying the solid luxury of a "room with bath connecting."