“We pay from eight to ten dollars a month, according to length of service and fidelity.  Of course, as a new hand, you can not expect ten dollars.”

“I shall be satisfied with eight, cousin.”

“Now, as to your duties.  You will work six hours on and six hours off.  That’s what we call a trick—­the six hours on, I mean.  So you will have every other six hours to rest, or do anything you like; that is, after you have attended to the horses.”

“Horses!” repeated James, puzzled; for the animals attached to the boat at that moment were mules.

“Some of our horses are mules,” said Captain Letcher, smiling.  “However, it makes no difference.  You will have to feed and rub them down, and then you can lie down in your bunk, or do anything else you like.”

“That won’t be very hard work,” said James, cheerfully.

“Oh, I forgot to say that you can ride or walk, as you choose.  You can rest yourself by changing from one to the other.”

James thought he should like to ride on horseback, as most boys do.  It was not, however, so good fun as he anticipated.  A canal-boat horse is by no means a fiery or spirited creature.  His usual gait is from two to two and a half miles an hour, and to a boy of quick, active temperament the slowness must be rather exasperating.  Yet, in the course of a day a boat went a considerable distance.  It usually made fifty, and sometimes sixty miles a day.  The rate depended on the number of locks it had to pass through.

Probably most of my young readers understand the nature of a lock.  As all water seeks a level, there would be danger in an uneven country that some parts of the canal would be left entirely dry, and in others the water would overflow.  For this reason at intervals locks are constructed, composed of brief sections of the canal barricaded at each end by gates.  When a boat is going down, the near gates are thrown open and the boat enters the lock, the water rushing in till a level is secured; then the upper gates are closed, fastening the boat in the lock.  Next the lower gates are opened, the water in the lock seeks the lower level of the other section of the canal, and the boat moves out of the lock, the water subsiding gradually beneath it.  Next, the lower gates are closed, and the boat proceeds on its way.  It will easily be understood, when the case is reversed, and the boat is going up, how after being admitted into the lock it will be lifted up to the higher level when the upper gates are thrown open.

If any of my young readers find it difficult to understand my explanation, I advise them to read Jacob Abbot’s excellent book, “Rollo on the Erie Canal,” where the whole matter is lucidly explained.

Railroads were not at that time as common as now, and the canal was of much more importance and value as a means of conveying freight.  Sometimes passengers traveled that way, when they were in not much of a hurry, but there were no express canal-boats, and a man who chose to travel in that way must have abundant leisure on his hands.  There is some difference between traveling from two to two and a half miles an hour, and between thirty and forty, as most of our railroad express trains do.