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Anything but an easy life, to my mind. Ah! there's nothing like roughing it, Harry, my boy. Why, I am thriving on it growing like a young walrus, eating like a Canadian voyageur, and sleeping like a top!
Gode shared my feelings, and became as desponding as myself. The light humour of the voyageur disappeared. The song of the Canadian boatman was heard no longer; but, in its place, the "sacre" and English exclamations were spluttered plentifully, and hurled at everything Mexican. I resolved at length to put an end to our sufferings. "This life will never do, Gode," said I, addressing my compagnon.
One pint of lyed corn with from two to four ounces of tallow was the daily allowance of a voyageur, and the endurance which this food gave him passes belief. Étienne St. Martin grumbled at it when he came fresh from Canada and pork eating. "Mange'-du-lard," his companions called him, especially Charle' Charette, who was the giant and the wearer of the black feather in his brigade of a dozen boats.
Had he been able to attach turbulent voyageurs to him as he attached native tribes, his heroic life would have ended in success even beyond his dreams. Tonty could better deal with ignorant men, his military training standing him in good stead; yet Tonty dared scarcely trust a voyageur out of his sight.
The wild roving life in the great prairie or the trackless pine forest, the vast solitudes of inland lakes and rivers, the chase, and the camp-fire had too much of excitement in them to allow the voyageur to return again to the narrow limits of civilization.
The long canoe lay waiting, a voyageur at each end. The bales were stowed carefully in the centre. Father de Casson met Menard at the upper end of the dock. He had come down by way of the winding road, for his bundle was heavy, and he knew no way but to carry it himself. Menard good-naturedly gave him a hand as they crossed the dock.
Pike's Peak, far away to the north, intensely white and silvery in the clear sky, hangs like a great dome high in the region of the clouds, a marked object, worthy to commemorate the indefatigable efforts of the early voyageur whose name it bears.
He seemed to grudge the waste of each night, camping late and launching early; and it was Godefroy's complaint that each portage was made so swiftly there was no time for that solace of the common voyageur the boatman's pipe. For eight days we travelled without seeing a sign of human presence but that one vague footmark in the sand.
I don't know, however, that one wishes a great man to be graceful, so long as he's familiar. "Aha, Monsieur Devereux!" said he, "we will give you some lessons in cooking to-night; we shall show you how to provide for yourself in that barbarous country which you are about to visit. Tout voyageur doit tout savoir!"
He was now to be my close companion during many days and nights, and it may not be out of place here to anticipate the verdict of three weeks, and to award him as a voyageur, snow-shoer and camp-maker a place second to none in the long list of my employees. Soon after quitting Cumberland we struck the Saskatchewan River, and, turning eastward along it, entered the great region of marsh and swamp.
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