Both on this day as well as yesterday we had, as you may think, met
and passed and been passed by many craft of one kind and another.
The most part of these were being rowed like ourselves, or were
sailing, in the sort of way that sailing is managed on the upper
reaches of the river; but every now and then we came on barges, laden
with hay or other country produce, or carrying bricks, lime, timber,
and the like, and these were going on their way without any means of
propulsion visible to me--just a man at the tiller, with often a
friend or two laughing and talking with him. Dick, seeing on one
occasion this day, that I was looking rather hard on one of these,
said: "That is one of our force-barges; it is quite as easy to work
vehicles by force by water as by land."

I understood pretty well that these "force vehicles" had taken the
place of our old steam-power carrying; but I took good care not to
ask any questions about them, as I knew well enough both that I
should never be able to understand how they were worked, and that in
attempting to do so I should betray myself, or get into some
complication impossible to explain; so I merely said, "Yes, of
course, I understand."

We went ashore at Bisham, where the remains of the old Abbey and the
Elizabethan house that had been added to them yet remained, none the
worse for many years of careful and appreciative habitation. The
folk of the place, however, were mostly in the fields that day, both
men and women; so we met only two old men there, and a younger one
who had stayed at home to get on with some literary work, which I
imagine we considerably interrupted. Yet I also think that the hard-
working man who received us was not very sorry for the interruption.