and, with all his knowledge
of great proportions, he was not prepared for its splendid vastness.
They came upon it in the evening, and camped beside it. They watched the
sun spread out his banners, presently veil his head in them, and sink
below the world. And between them and that sunset was a vast rock
stretching out from a ponderous shore--a colossal stone lion, resting
Sphinxlike, keeping its faith with the ages. Alone, the warder of
the West, stormy, menacing, even the vernal sun could give it little
cheerfulness. But to Iberville and his followers it brought no gloom at
night, nor yet in the morning when all was changed, and a soft silver
mist hung over the "great water," like dissolving dew, through which
the sunlight came with a strange, solemn delicacy. Upon the shore were
bustle, cheerfulness, and song, until every canoe was launched, and then
the band of warriors got in, and presently were away in the haze.

The long bark canoes, with lofty prows, stained with powerful dyes, slid
along this path swiftly, the paddles noiselessly cleaving the water
with the precision of a pendulum. One followed the other with a space
between, so that Iberville, in the first, looking back, could see a
diminishing procession, the last seeming large and weird--almost a
shadow--as it were a part of the weird atmosphere. On either side was
that soft plumbless diffusion, and ahead the secret of untravelled wilds
and the fortunes of war.

As if by common instinct, all gossip ceased soon after they left
the shore, and, cheerful as was the French Canadian, he was--and
is--superstitious. He saw sermons in stones, books in the running
brooks, and the supernatural in everything. Simple, hardy, occasionally
bloody, he was ever on the watch for signs and wonders, and a phase of
nature influenced him after the manner of a being with a temperament.
Often, as some of the woodsmen and river-men had seen this strange
effect, they now made the sacred gesture as they ran on. The pure
moisture lay like a fine exudation on their brown skins, glistened on
their black hair, and hung from their beards, giving them a mysterious
look. The colours of their canoes and clothes were softened by the
dim air and long use, and there seemed to accompany each boat and
each person an atmosphere within this other haze, a spiritual kind of
exhalation; so that one might have thought them, with the crucifixes
on their breasts, and that unworldly, distinguished look w