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.
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