This volume was formerly published under the title, "Houseboating on a Colonial Waterway"; but its appropriateness for inclusion in the "See America First Series" to represent the State of Virginia is so obvious that the publishers have, in this new edition, changed the title to "Virginia: The Old Dominion," and reissued the book in a new dress, generally uniform with the other volumes in the series.

AN INCONGRUOUS BIT OF HOUSEBOATING.

It was while we were in perplexed consideration as to where to go and what to do, that the magazine article appeareddevoted to houseboating.

We haunted the libraries until we had exhausted the literature of houseboating.

How the cares and responsibilities of life fell away when people went a-houseboating!

We did not know that most of the literature of houseboating is the work of people with plenty of imagination and no houseboats.

It had been a good deal a matter of sentiment; but sentiment will have its way in houseboating.

In some way that only those who know the laze of houseboating can understand, the hours slipped by in that tiny, tucked-away haven, and it was the middle of the afternoon when Gadabout slowly felt her way out from behind the island and started up the James in the wake of the Sarah Constant, the Goodspeed, and the Discovery.

And, over and above all this, is the fact that miserably pitching and rolling about in grim battle with the elements is not houseboating.

It is easy then to see that snug harbours count for much when cruising in the true spirit of houseboating, and in the charming, awkward tubs that make the best and the most lovable of houseboats.

Then, in the enjoyment of one of the most charming features of houseboating, an evening meal served on the upper deck, we watched the sun dip down behind the island and the twilight shadows gather in.

Such times are good tests to determine how much one possesses of the houseboating spirit.

For, to our minds, one of the chief charms of houseboating lay in poking about in such out-of-the-way places.

Houseboating was taking us into strange places.

Many are the advantages of houseboating over camping or any other form of outing.

We found Herring Creek a good, lazy houseboating waterway; a brown ribbon of marsh stream wandering aimlessly among the rushes.

And yet, these were among the most glorious days for houseboating: tonic days with a hint of winter in the chill, crisp air, and dreamy days with a lingering of summer in the sun's warm glow.

Often it is necessary so to hobble your floating home where there is danger of her swinging upon hidden obstructions; but it is hard on the poetry of houseboating.

CHAPTER XXV AN INCONGRUOUS BIT OF HOUSEBOATING

This surely was strange houseboating.

In its glow we could scarcely credit our own recollections of some wintry bits of houseboating; and as to that story in our note-books about our being ice-bound in Eppes Creek, it was too much to ask ourselves to believe a word of it.