ength of one famous _portage_ opposite the Chaudiere Falls
on the Ottawa.

In winter the _voyageur_ becomes _coureur des bois_ to his new masters.
Then for six months endless reaches, white, snow-padded, silent; forests
wreathed and bossed with snow; nights in camp on a couch of pines or
rolled in robes with a roaring fire to keep the wolves off, melting snow
steaming to the heat, meat sputtering at the end of a skewered stick;
sometimes to the _marche donc! marche donc!_ of the driver, with crisp
tinkling of dog-bells in frosty air, a long journey overland by dog-sled
to the trading-post; sometimes that blinding fury which sweeps over the
northland, turning earth and air to a white darkness; sometimes a
belated traveller cowering under a snow-drift for warmth and wrapping
his blanket about him to cross life's Last Divide.

These things were the every-day life of the French trapper.

At present there is only one of the great fur companies remaining--the
Hudson's Bay of Canada. In the United States there are only two
important centres of trade in furs which are not imported--St. Paul and
St. Louis. For both the Hudson's Bay Company and the fur traders of the
Upper Missouri the French trapper still works as his ancestors did for
the great companies a hundred years ago.

The roadside tramp of to-day is a poor representative of Robin Hoods and
Rob Roys; and the French trapper of shambling gait and baggy clothes
seen at the fur posts of the north to-day is a poor type of the class
who used to stalk through the baronial halls[31] of Montreal's governor
like a lord and set the rafters of Fort William's council chamber
ringing, and make the wine and the money and the brawls of St. Louis a
by-word.

And yet, with all his degeneracy, the French trapper retains a something
of his old traditions. A few years ago I was on a northern river steamer
going to one of the Hudson's Bay trading-posts. A brawl seemed to sound
from the steerage passengers. What was the matter? "Oh," said the
captain, "the French trappers going out north for the winter, drunk as
usual!"

As he spoke, a voice struck up one of those _chansons populaires_, which
have been sung by every generation of _voyageurs_ since Frenchmen came
to America, _A La Claire Fontaine_, a song which the French trappers'
ancestors brought from Normandy hundreds of years ago, about the fickle
lady and the faded roses and the vain regrets. Then--was it
possible?--these grizzled