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Updated: September 29, 2025
As we desired not only to make their acquaintance, but to win from these botanists at least a few grasses, we presented ourselves like true commis voyageurs, with dried herbs to sell, each of us having a package of plants under his arm, mine being Swiss, gathered last summer, Braun's from the Palatinate.
Each man landed with pack on his back, lighted his pipe, and trotted away over portages so dank and slippery that only a moccasined foot could gain hold. On long portages, camp-fires were kindled and the kettles slung on the crotched sticks for the evening meal. At night, the voyageurs slept under the overturned canoes, or lay on the sand with bare faces to the sky.
Every wedding was the occasion for terpsichorean festivities which lasted all day long. The habitant liked to sing, especially when working with others in the woods or when on the march. The voyageurs relieved the tedium of their long journeys by breaking into song at intervals. But the popular repertoire was limited to a few folksongs, most of them songs of Old France.
Surely the voyage of Columbus, discovering Hispaniola, while sailing before and obeying the trade winds, did not surpass in real adventure this simple expedition of those half-warrior pioneer voyageurs, Fathers Hennepin and La Salle.
At first Charley continued his sad thoughts, staring all the while at the red embers of the expiring fire; but soon his eyes began to blink, and the stumps of trees began to assume the form of voyageurs, and voyageurs to look like stumps of trees. Then a moonbeam darted in, and Mr Addison stood on the other side of the fire.
What Norman had shot, then, was an antelope; and the reason why it is called "cabree" by the voyageurs, and "goat" by the fur-traders, is partly from its colour resembling that of the common goat, but more from the fact, that along the upper part of its neck there is a standing mane, which does in truth give it somewhat the appearance of the European goat.
The shouts of the jubilant voyageurs mingled with the roar of ocean breakers. Like Alexander Mackenzie of the far North a decade before, Lewis and Clark had reached the long-sought Western Sea. They had been first up the Missouri, first across the middle Rockies, and first down the Columbia to the Pacific.
As the boat passed by, they strained their ears to catch any scrap of conversation which might be of use to them in making their escape. But the noise of the voyageurs and of the wind in the sail was deafening, moreover the boat was making good headway, so that they only overheard one phrase: "You've brought me on a fool's errand.
On August 24, a sharp bend in the river showed them the little home fort which they had left four months before. The joy of the voyageurs fairly exploded. They beat their paddles on the canoe, fired off all the ammunition that remained, waved flags, and set the cliffs ringing with shouts. Mackenzie spent the following winter at Chipewyan, despondent and lonely.
J'écris ceci pour servir d'avertissement aux voyageurs qui, comme moi, auroient affaire
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