They Are Generally Of French Descent, And
Inherit Much Of The Gayety And Lightness Of Heart Of Their
Ancestors, Being Full Of Anecdote And Song, And Ever Ready For
The Dance.
They inherit, too, a fund of civility and
complaisance; and, instead of that hardness and grossness which
men in
Laborious life are apt to indulge towards each other, they
are mutually obliging and accommodating; interchanging kind
offices, yielding each other assistance and comfort in every
emergency, and using the familiar appellations of "cousin" and
"brother" when there is in fact no relationship. Their natural
good-will is probably heightened by a community of adventure and
hardship in their precarious and wandering life.
No men are more submissive to their leaders and employers, more
capable of enduring hardship, or more good-humored under
privations. Never are they so happy as when on long and rough
expeditions, toiling up rivers or coasting lakes; encamping at
night on the borders, gossiping round their fires, and
bivouacking in the open air. They are dextrous boatmen, vigorous
and adroit with the oar and paddle, and will row from morning
until night without a murmur. The steersman often sings an old
traditionary French song, with some regular burden in which they
all join, keeping time with their oars; if at any time they flag
in spirits or relax in exertion, it is but necessary to strike up
a song of the kind to put them all in fresh spirits and activity.
The Canadian waters are vocal with these little French chansons,
that have been echoed from mouth to mouth and transmitted from
father to son, from the earliest days of the colony; and it has a
pleasing effect, in a still golden summer evening, to see a
batteau gliding across the bosom of a lake and dipping its oars
to the cadence of these quaint old ditties, or sweeping along in
full chorus on a bright sunny morning, down the transparent
current of one of the Canada rivers.
But we are talking of things that are fast fading away! The march
of mechanical invention is driving everything poetical before it.
The steamboats, which are fast dispelling the wildness and
romance of our lakes and rivers, and aiding to subdue the world
into commonplace, are proving as fatal to the race of the
Canadian voyageurs as they have been to that of the boatmen of
the Mississippi. Their glory is departed. They are no longer the
lords of our internal seas, and the great navigators of the
wilderness. Some of them may still occasionally be seen coasting
the lower lakes with their frail barks, and pitching their camps
and lighting their fires upon the shores; but their range is fast
contracting to those remote waters and shallow and obstructed
rivers unvisited by the steamboat. In the course of years they
will gradually disappear; their songs will die away like the
echoes they once awakened, and the Canadian voyageurs will become
a forgotten race, or remembered, like their associates, the
Indians, among the poetical images of past times, and as themes
for local and romantic associations.
An instance of the buoyant temperament and the professional pride
of these people was furnished in the gay and braggart style in
which they arrived at New York to join the enterprise. They were
determined to regale and astonish the people of the "States" with
the sight of a Canadian boat and a Canadian crew. They
accordingly fitted up a large but light bark canoe, such as is
used in the fur trade; transported it in a wagon from the banks
of the St. Lawrence to the shores of Lake Champlain; traversed
the lake in it, from end to end; hoisted it again in a wagon and
wheeled it off to Lansingburgh, and there launched it upon the
waters of the Hudson. Down this river they plied their course
merrily on a fine summer's day, making its banks resound for the
first time with their old French boat songs; passing by the
villages with whoop and halloo, so as to make the honest Dutch
farmers mistake them for a crew of savages. In this way they
swept, in full song and with regular flourish of the paddle,
round New York, in a still summer evening, to the wonder and
admiration of its inhabitants, who had never before witnessed on
their waters, a nautical apparition of the kind.
Such was the variegated band of adventurers about to embark in
the Tonquin on this ardous and doubtful enterprise. While yet in
port and on dry land, in the bustle of preparation and the
excitement of novelty, all was sunshine and promise. The
Canadians, especially, who, with their constitutional vivacity,
have a considerable dash of the gascon, were buoyant and
boastful, and great brag arts as to the future; while all those
who had been in the service of the Northwest Company, and engaged
in the Indian trade, plumed themselves upon their hardihood and
their capacity to endure privations. If Mr. Astor ventured to
hint at the difficulties they might have to encounter, they
treated them with scorn. They were "northwesters;" men seasoned
to hardships, who cared for neither wind nor weather. They could
live hard, lie hard, sleep hard, eat dogs! - in a word they were
ready to do and suffer anything for the good of the enterprise.
With all this profession of zeal and devotion, Mr. Astor was not
overconfident of the stability and firm faith of these mercurial
beings. He had received information, also, that an armed brig
from Halifax, probably at the instigation of the Northwest
Company, was hovering on the coast, watching for the Tonquin,
with the purpose of impressing the Canadians on board of her, as
British subjects, and thus interrupting the voyage. It was a time
of doubt and anxiety, when the relations between the United
States and Great Britain were daily assuming a more precarious
aspect and verging towards that war which shortly ensued. As a
precautionary measure, therefore, he required that the voyageurs,
as they were about to enter into the service of an American
association, and to reside within the limits of the United
States, should take the oaths of naturalization as American
citizens.
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