Have you ever seen a horse-yacht?  Sometimes it is called a scow; but that sounds common.  Sometimes it is called a house-boat; but that is too English.  What does it profit a man to have a whole dictionary full of language at his service, unless he can invent a new and suggestive name for his friend’s pleasure-craft?  The foundation of the horse-yacht—­if a thing that floats may be called fundamental—­is a flat-bottomed boat, some fifty feet long and ten feet wide, with a draft of about eight inches.  The deck is open for fifteen feet aft of the place where the bowsprit ought to be; behind that it is completely covered by a house, cabin, cottage, or whatever you choose to call it, with straight sides and a peaked roof of a very early Gothic pattern.  Looking in at the door you see, first of all, two cots, one on either side of the passage; then an open space with a dining-table, a stove, and some chairs; beyond that a pantry with shelves, and a great chest for provisions.  A door at the back opens into the kitchen, and from that another door opens into a sleeping-room for the boatmen.  A huge wooden tiller curves over the stern of the boat, and the helmsman stands upon the kitchen-roof.  Two canoes are floating behind, holding back, at the end of their long tow-ropes, as if reluctant to follow so clumsy a leader.  This is an accurate description of the horse-yacht.  If necessary it could be sworn to before a notary public.  But I am perfectly sure that you might read this page through without skipping a word, and if you had never seen the creature with your own eyes, you would have no idea how absurd it looks and how comfortable it is.

While we were stowing away our trunks and bags under the cots, and making an equitable division of the hooks upon the walls, the motive power of the yacht stood patiently upon the shore, stamping a hoof, now and then, or shaking a shaggy head in mild protest against the flies.  Three more pessimistic-looking horses I never saw.  They were harnessed abreast, and fastened by a prodigious tow-rope to a short post in the middle of the forward deck.  Their driver was a truculent, brigandish, bearded old fellow in long boots, a blue flannel shirt, and a black sombrero.  He sat upon the middle horse, and some wild instinct of colour had made him tie a big red handkerchief around his shoulders, so that the eye of the beholder took delight in him.  He posed like a bold, bad robber-chief.  But in point of fact I believe he was the mildest and most inoffensive of men.  We never heard him say anything except at a distance, to his horses, and we did not inquire what that was.

Well, as I have said, we were haggling courteously over those hooks in the cabin, when the boat gave a lurch.  The bow swung out into the stream.  There was a scrambling and clattering of iron horse-shoes on the rough shingle of the bank; and when we looked out of doors, our house was moving up the river with the boat under it.