The latter, of course, required payment, and their ways were notoriously coarse.

If on foot he could not cross the Lake, nor visit the countries on either shore, nor the islands; therefore he cut down the poplar and commenced the canoe.
Whither he should go, and what he should do, was entirely at the mercy of circumstances.

He had no plan, no route.
He had a dim idea of offering his services to some distant king or prince, of unfolding to him the inventions he had made.

He tried to conceal from himself that he would probably be repulsed and laughed at.
Without money, without a retinue, how could he expect to be received or listened to?
Still, he must go; he could not help himself, go he must.
As he chopped and chipped through the long weeks of early spring, while the easterly winds bent the trees above him, till the buds unfolded and the leaves expanded--while his hands were thus employed, the whole map, as it were, of the known countries seemed to pass without volition before his mind.

He saw the cities along the shores of the great Lake; he saw their internal condition, the weakness of the social fabric, the misery of the bondsmen.