NARRATIVE. 53 



this time the weather being so calm, they ventured on a course which 

 brought us at one time about two miles from the shore. Their cau- 

 tion seemed to some of us, accustomed to a bolder style of navigation, 

 somewhat exaggerated. But if the rocky character of the shore, 

 the suddenness with which both wind and sea rise here, and the 

 frailness of the vessels be taken into consideration, perhaps it is not 

 so unnecessary as it would seem at first. Moreover it is to be re- 

 membered that although a swim of a mile might under ordinary 

 circumstances be no very desperate undertaking, yet in this icy 

 water, a person swamped at that distance from the shore would in 

 all probability be disabled long before reaching it. And even if 

 the shore were reached, the prospect of having to make one's way 

 on foot through this rugged, gameless, fly-possessed region to the 

 nearest trading-post or mining location, would be dismal in the ex- 

 treme. Deprived of salt pork and biscuit, one's subsistence would 

 depend on the chance of snaring a hare or two, with tripe de roche 

 as the sole alternative. 



As we pushed out into the bay a weather-beaten veteran in the 

 Professor's boat struck up a song, the others in the canoe and those 

 of the " Dancing Feather " joining in the chorus and repeating each 

 verse as he got -through with it. Their singing had nothing very 

 artistic about it, being in fact only a kind of modified recital, in 

 a quavering and rather monotonous voice, coming, with little modula- 

 tion, from the mouth only, but they kept time well, and it had a 

 heartiness and spirit that rendered it agreeable. Their songs 

 were all French ; according to the Professor, the wanton chansons 

 of the ancien regime, which the ancestors of these men had no 

 doubt heard sung by gay young officers, in remembrance of distant 

 beloved Paris. A strange contrast, as he said, between these produc- 

 tions of the hot-bed civilization of a splendid and luxurious court, and 

 the wilderness where alone they now survive ! The tunes, I fancy, 

 are indigenous ; at least, their singing had a certain naivete and some- 

 times sadness about it quite at variance with the words. Neither 

 the Canadians of the bateau, nor the Indians (of whom we had one, 

 with a couple of half breeds in whom the Indian blood decidedly pre- 

 dominated, in our canoe) joined at all in the singing, either now or 



