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Updated: September 23, 2025
The canoemen had met the ejected settlers bound up the lake; and with them, whom did they see but the bellicose Captain Miles McDonell, given free passage but a year before to Montreal and now on "the prosperous return," which he, himself, had prophesied? The settlers' news of Seven Oaks sent the brave captain hurrying southward to inform Lord Selkirk of the massacre.
Simpson was famous in those days for his swift journeys with his celebrated Iroquois canoemen. They were made by Canot du Maitre as it was called, the largest bark canoe made by the Indians, carrying about six tons and a crew of sixteen paddlers, and which ascended as far as Fort William. Thence further progress was made in the much smaller "North Canoes" to all points west of Lake Superior.
In the evening of the 29th we arrived at a point where another channel joins the Jaburu from the northeast. Up this the tide was flowing; we turned westward, and thus met the flood coming from the Amazons. This point is the object of a strange superstitious observance on the part of the canoemen.
If there was little work, to show after a stop at Fontainebleau he had many memories of good-fellowship and some of the friends he met there were to be the first to greet him when he came to live on this side of the water. While on their "Inland Voyage" the two canoemen had decided that the most perfect mode of travel was by canal-boat. What could be more delightful?
The site selected by Pierre Lapierre for Chloe Elliston's school was, in point of location, as the quarter-breed had said, an excellent one. Upon a level plateau at the top of the high bank that slants steeply to the water of the Yellow Knife River, a short distance above its mouth, Lapierre set the canoemen to cutting the timber and brush from a wide area.
At all hazards we were determined to notify our company of the enemy's invading flotilla; and without margin for accidents we had but a month to cross half a continent. At nightfall the fourth day from the shrine, after a tiresome nine-mile traverse past the Chaudière Falls of the Ottawa, glittering camp-fires on the river bank ahead showed where a fresh relay of canoemen awaited us.
The skill of the canoemen, the strength and endurance of the packmen, excited his admiration. What wonderful raw material! Given drill and discipline, what might not be achieved on the frontier with such craftsmen! The muscles, all whipcord, of these rugged Canadians, part coureur de bois, part scout, amazed him. One thing was not so evident as he could have wished.
"That's what I have in mind, Sol. The falls are dangerous at this stage of the river, no doubt about it, but we're not canoemen for nothing, and with our lives at stake we'll not think twice before shooting 'em. What say you, boys?" "The falls fur me!" replied the shiftless one, quickly. "Nothin' could keep me from takin' the tumble. I jest love them falls," said Long Jim.
As soon as the terrific reptile was perceived by the canoemen, they paddled as softly as possible towards him, intending to wait at a short distance till the crocodile should have accomplished his object, when they agreed to pull rapidly towards the shore, and reap the fruit of the reptile's amazing strength, by scaring him off from his prey, or destroying him with harpoons, for the skin of the crocodile is not in this country considered impenetrable.
"It is necessary," answered the man, "that I should make a forced march." "You are going to leave me?" Lapierre smiled at the evident note of alarm in her voice. "I am going to take two of the canoemen and return in all haste to your school. Do you realize that MacNair, now that he has lost his winter provisions, will stop at nothing to obtain more?"
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