one of those long, ugly, shapeless boats, which are to be seen
congregating in the neighbourhood of Brentford. So seated, they
are carried along at the rate of a mile and a half an hour, and
usually while away the time in gentle converse with the man at
the rudder, or in silent abstraction over a pipe.

But the dullness of such a life as this is fully atoned for by
the excitement of that which follows it in London. The men of the
Internal Navigation are known to be fast, nay, almost furious in
their pace of living; not that they are extravagant in any great
degree, a fault which their scale of salaries very generally
forbids; but they are one and all addicted to Coal Holes and
Cider Cellars; they dive at midnight hours into Shades, and know
all the back parlours of all the public-houses in the neighbourhood
of the Strand. Here they leave messages for one another, and call
the girl at the bar by her Christian name. They are a set of men
endowed with sallow complexions, and they wear loud clothing,
and spend more money in gin-and-water than in gloves.

The establishment is not unusually denominated the 'Infernal
Navigation', and the gentlemen employed are not altogether
displeased at having it so called. The 'Infernal Navvies',
indeed, rather glory in the name. The navvies of Somerset House
are known all over London, and there are those who believe that
their business has some connexion with the rivers or railroads of
that bourne from whence no traveller returns. Looking, however,
from their office windows into the Thames, one might be tempted
to imagine that the infernal navigation with which they are
connected is not situated so far distant from the place of their
labours.