100 TRANSACTIONS. 1906-7. 



landed and offered their vows, according to custom, for a success- 

 ful voyage. This duty performed, they demanded, also accord- 

 ing to custom, the distribution of eight gallons of rum to each 

 canoe; nominally for consumption during the voyage, but as 

 Henry dryly remarks, it was none the less according to custom 

 to drink the whole upon the spot. 



The following night they camped at the foot of the Long 

 Sault — the scene of that splendid piece of heroism the story of 

 which has been so admirably told by Mr. T. G. Marquis, in his 

 "Stories of New France." The long Sault involved three port- 

 ages, where everything had to be taken out of the canoes, and 

 carried overland to the navigable water above. The loads 

 carried by these tough, wiry voyageurs seem almost incredible. 

 Over a rough portage, anywhere from a few yards to a mile or 

 more in length, they would carry not one but two and even 

 three packs, each of a hundred pounds. After a smoke at the 

 head of the portage, they would return for another load, and so 

 on until everything had been taken to the head of the rapid. 

 Then embarking, they would push out into the stream and strike 

 up one of those inimitable chansons of old Canada — perhaps "A 

 la Claire Fontaine," or "Gai le rosier." We hear a good deal, 

 in the narratives of western explorers, travellers and fur-traders, 

 of the faults of the French-Canadian voyageur, but even his 

 severest critics have been forced to bear testimony to his cheer- 

 fulness under the most trying conditions. The man who could 

 break into a rollicking folk-song, at the end of a series of difficult 

 portages, under a broiling sun, and in the midst of a cloud of 

 mosquitoes, should surely be forgiven a catalogue of sins. 



Fourteen leagues above the Long Sault, Henry came to 

 a deserted French trading-post, surrounded by a stockade. 

 Later in the day he reached the river below us. His description 

 of the Rideau and Chaudiere as they appeared a century and a 

 half ago, is worth repeating. "On the south bank," he says, 

 "is the mouth of a river four hundred yards wide, and which 

 falls into the Outaouais perpendicularly, from the edge of a rock, 

 forty feet high. The appearance of this fall has procured for it 

 the name of the rideau, or curtain; and hence the river itself is 

 called the Rideau, or Riviere du Rideau. The fall presented 

 itself to my view with extraordinary beauty and magnificence, 

 and decorated with a variety of colours." 



"Still ascending the Outaouais," he continues, "at three 



