a Jemmeraie,
who was to be second in command, all unhatted as they heard the long
last farewell of the bells. Every eye is fastened on the chief
bowman's steel-shod pole, held high--there is silence but for the
bells--the bowman's pole is lowered--as with one stroke out sweep the
paddles in a poetry of motion. The chimes die away over the water, the
chapel spire gleams--it, too, is gone. Some one strikes up a plaintive
ditty,--the _voyageur's_ song of the lost lady and the faded roses, or
the dying farewell of Cadieux, the hunter, to his comrades,--and the
adventurers are launched for the Western Sea.

[Illustration: Fight at the Foot-hills of the Rockies between Crows and
Snakes.]

II

1731-1736

Every mile westward was consecrated by heroism. There was the place
where Cadieux, the white hunter, went ashore single-handed to hold the
Iroquois at bay, while his comrades escaped by running the rapids; but
Cadieux was assailed by a subtler foe than the Iroquois, _la folie des
bois_,--the folly of the woods,--that sends the hunter wandering in
endless circles till he dies from hunger; and when his companions
returned, Cadieux lay in eternal sleep with a death chant scribbled on
bark across his breast. There were the Rapids of the Long Sault where
Dollard and seventeen Frenchmen fought seven hundred Iroquois till
every white man fell. Not one of all De la Verendrye's fifty followers
but knew that perils as great awaited him.

Streaked foam told the voyageurs where they were approaching rapids.
Alert as a hawk, the bowman stroked for the shore; and his stroke was
answered by all paddles. If the water were high enough to carry the
canoes above rocks, and the rapids were not too violent, several of the
boatmen leaped out to knees in water, and "tracked" the canoes up
stream; but this was unusual with loaded craft. The bowman steadied
the beached keel. 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. Morning mist had not risen
till all the boats were once more breasting the flood of the Ottawa.
For a month the canoe prows met the current when a portage lifted the
fleet out of the Ottawa into a