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One of the deputation writes that "they resembled a troop of furies more than human beings." For some time the mob refused the approaches of the officers of the Company. At length the quarrel was settled by the Company agreeing to pay the voyageur's wages in full, and that he should be allowed to remain at home.
Anne in one breath, and invocations of a personage not mentioned in the curé's "petee cat-ee-cheesm" in the next breath, and imprecations that their "souls might be smashed on the end of a picket fence," the voyageur's common oath even to this day, the boatmen stored goods fore, aft, and athwart till each long canoe sank to the gunwale as it was gently pushed out on the water.
To add to the small resentment against him which began to rankle in McElroy's heart, and which had never really left it since that evening in De Seviere when Maren Le Moyne had passed behind the cabin of the Savilles with some voyageur's tot on her shoulder and the handsome gallant from Montreal had lost his manners staring, one day in this same week a Bois-Brules came to the post gates and asked for one Maren Le Moyne.
He fitted himself out with new shirts and buckskins, sashes, caps, neips, and moccasins, and when he was not on duty showed himself like a hero, knife in sheath, a weather-browned and sinewy figure. To dance, sing, drink, and play the violin, and have the scant dozen white women, the half-breeds, and squaws of Mackinac admire him, was a voyageur's heaven its brief duration being its charm.
I cannot be made to care what the Herr Baron's sentiments about Albert Durer or Lucas Cranach may be. I can digest my rindfleisch without the aid of the commis voyageur's criticisms on Gothic architecture. This may be my misfortune. In spite of the Italian blood which I inherit, I am a shy man shy as the purest Briton.
The ships were unloaded and two of the vessels were sent back to France. The rest of the expedition prepared to winter at Cap Rouge, a short distance above the settlement. Once more Cartier made a short trip up the river to Hochelaga, but with no important incidents, and here the voyageur's journal comes to an end. He may have written more, but if so the pages have never been found.
The lads will be jawing till the morn's morn." This equivocal order had little effect on the ordained course of a voyageur's quarrel. "These St. Martins without stomachs, how is a man to hit them? pouf!" said Charle', and Etienne felt on his tender spot the cruel allusion to his brother Alexis, whose stomach had been made public property. He began to shed tears of wrath.
High in the upper air the hollow booming of the night-hawk was heard at intervals; and the wild cry of the night-owl from a dead branch, shouting to its fellow, woke the silence of that lonely river scene. The old trapper, stretched before the crackling fire, smoked his pipe or hummed some French voyageur's song.
Planks, laid loosely upon the cross-ties of the rafters, formed the up-stairs of the building: up-ladder would be a term more in accordance with facts; for it was by an appliance of that kind that the younger and more active of the sixteen members composing the old voyageur's family removed themselves from view when they retired for the night.
This operation is called "making a portage;" and as these portages vary from twelve yards to twelve miles in length, it may be readily conceived that a voyageur's life is not an easy one by any means. This, however, is only one of his difficulties. Rapids occur which are not so dangerous as to make a "portage" necessary, but are sufficiently turbulent to render the descent of them perilous.
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