We bothered a good while about getting through a preliminary lock; nor, when fairly under way, did we ever accomplish, I think, six miles an hour.  Constant delays were caused, moreover, by stopping to take up passengers and freight,—­not at regular landing-places, but anywhere along the green banks.  The scenery was identical with that of the railway, because the latter runs along by the river-side through the whole distance, or nowhere departs from it except to make a short cut across some sinuosity; so that our only advantage lay in the drawling, snail-like slothfulness of our progress, which allowed us time enough and to spare for the objects along the shore.  Unfortunately, there was nothing, or next to nothing, to be seen,—­the country being one unvaried level over the whole thirty miles of our voyage,—­not a hill in sight, either near or far, except that solitary one on the summit of which we had left Lincoln Cathedral.  And the Cathedral was our landmark for four hours or more, and at last rather faded out than was hidden by any intervening object.

It would have been a pleasantly lazy day enough, if the rough and bitter wind had not blown directly in our faces, and chilled us through, in spite of the sunshine that soon succeeded a sprinkle or two of rain.  These English east-winds, which prevail from February till June, are greater nuisances than the east-wind of our own Atlantic coast, although they do not bring mist and storm, as with us, but some of the sunniest weather that England sees.  Under their influence, the sky smiles and is villanous.

The landscape was tame to the last degree, but had an English character that was abundantly worth our looking at.  A green luxuriance of early grass; old, high-roofed farm-houses, surrounded by their stone barns and ricks of bay and grain; ancient villages, with the square, gray tower of a church seen afar over the level country, amid the cluster of red roofs; here and there a shadowy grove of venerable trees, surrounding what was perhaps an Elizabethan ball, though it looked more like the abode of some rich yeoman.  Once, too, we saw the tower of a mediaeval castle, that of Tattershall, built by a Cromwell, but whether of the Protector’s family I cannot tell.  But the gentry do not appear to have settled multitudinously in this tract of country; nor is it to be wondered at, since a lover of the picturesque would as soon think of settling in Holland.  The river retains its canal-like aspect all along; and only in the latter part of its course does it become more than wide enough for the little steamer to turn itself round,—­at broadest, not more than twice that width.

The only memorable incident of our voyage happened when a mother-duck was leading her little fleet of five ducklings across the river, just as our steamer went swaggering by, stirring the quiet stream into great waves that lashed the banks on either side.  I saw the imminence of the catastrophe, and hurried to the stern of the boat to witness, since I could not possibly avert it.  The poor ducklings had uttered their baby-quacks, and striven with all their tiny might to escape:  four of them, I believe, were washed aside and thrown off unhurt from the steamer’s prow; but the fifth must have gone under the whole length of the keel, and never could have come up alive.