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| Here's a route refresher! Tomorrow, on to Smith's Falls! |
- New to this blog? Read it from the beginning
- Read about our 6,000-mile trip around America's Great Loop
- Enter the SlowBoat "What IS It?" quiz
Picking up our story from Thurs June 21: We stayed
at Newboro Lock, where we visited an actual English canal boat. But Newboro Lock
was also momentous for us because it’s the Isthmus of the Rideau.
This lock is the
height of land; it separates the watershed of the Rideau River, to the north, from
the Gananoque River to the south.
It's Downhill from Here
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| On the dock in Newboro. |
Since we started up the canal, we’ve been steadily climbing
toward this summit. From here on out, downhill
all the way.
That’s a bit different from our home canal, the Erie, which goes
up, then down, then up across the width of New York State..
Before the Rideau Canal connected these two watersheds, if
you wanted to go from Mud Lake, in the
south, to Rideau Lake, to the north, you had to make an 8,000 foot portage.
Fine for a birch bark canoe! For us, floating up a few feet in the lock was SO much better than having to carry our 14-ton canal boat for more than a mile!
Call in the Sappers!
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| One of the few places where the Rideau actually feels like a canal: the "cut" right after Newboro. |
We had a peaceful night at Newboro, undisturbed by the while of mosquitoes. It wasn't like this originally. So many men died of malaria while working to build this lock that work temporarily came to a stop.
The chief engineer, the heroic Colonel By had the land cleared of
vegetation, since malaria was thought to be caused by the “bad air” found in
swamps.
And instead of hiring more
contractors, he called in the Navy Seals of canal construction, a unit called in the Royal Sappers and Miners—soldiers
who were particularly skilled in digging ditches and handling explosives.
And you thought ditch digging was a lowly profession.
From Newboro we cruised on to the sweet town of Westport, where
we spent Saturday and Sunday. More on
that soon!
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