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.
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