6. The Highway Of The Fur Trade
Dear dark-brown waters, full of all the stain
Of sombre spruce-woods and the forest fens,
Laden with sound from far-off northern glens
Where winds and craggy cataracts complain,
Voices of streams and mountain pines astrain,
The pines that brood above the roaring foam
Of La Montague or Des Erables; thine home
Is distant yet, a shelter far to gain.
Aye, still to eastward, past the shadowy lake
And the long slopes of Rigaud toward the sun.
The mightier stream, thy comrade, waits for thee,
The beryl waters that espouse and take
Thine in their deep embrace, and bear thee on
In that great bridal journey to the sea.
LAMPMAN.
While Champlain was in Paris, in 1612, a young man, one Nicolas de Vignau, whom he had sent the previous year to visit the tribes of the Ottawa, reappeared, with a marvellous tale of what he had seen on his travels. He had found a great lake, he said, and out of it a river flowing north, which he had descended and reached the shores of the sea, where he had seen the wreck of an English ship. Seventeen days' travel by canoe, said Vignau, would bring one to the shores of his sea. Champlain was delighted, and prepared immediately to follow up this important discovery. He returned to Canada, and about the end of May 1613 set out from Montreal with Vignau and three companions. The rest of the story is better told in Parkman's words--and Parkman is here at his very best.
"All day they plied their paddles, and when the night came they made their campfire in the forest. Day dawned. The east glowed with tranquil fire, that pierced, with eyes of flame, the fir-trees whose jagged tops stood drawn in black against the burning heaven. Beneath the glossy river slept in shadow, or spread far and wide in sheets of burnished bronze; and the white moon, paling in the face of day, hung like a disk of silver in the western sky. Now a fervid light touched the dead top of the hemlock, and, creeping downward, bathed the mossy beard of the patriarchal cedar, unstirred in the breathless air. Now, a fiercer spark beamed from the east; and now, half risen on the sight, a dome of crimson fire, the sun blazed with floods of radiance across the awakened wilderness.
"The canoes were launched again, and the voyagers held their course. Soon the still surface was flecked with spots of foam; islets of froth floated by, tokens of some great convulsion. Then, on their left, the falling curtain of the Rideau shone like silver betwixt its bordering woods, and in front, white as a snow-drift, the cataracts of the Chaudière barred their way. They saw the unbridled river careering down its sheeted rocks, foaming in unfathomed chasms, wearying the solitude with the hoarse outcry of its agony and rage."
While the Indians threw an offering into the foam as an offering to the Manitou of the cataract, Champlain and his men shouldered their canoes and climbed over the long portage to the quiet waters of the Lake of the Chaudière, now Lake Des Chênes. Past the Falls of the Chats and a long succession of rapids they made their way, until at last, discouraged by the difficulties of the river, they took to the woods, and made their way through them, tormented by mosquitoes, to the village of Tessouat, one of the principal chiefs of the Algonquins, who welcomed Champlain to his country.
Feasting, the smoking of ceremonial pipes, and a great deal of speech-making followed. Champlain asked for men and canoes to conduct him to the country of the Nipissings, through whom he hoped to reach the North Sea. Tessouat and his elders looked dubious. They had no love for the Nipissings, and preferred to keep Champlain among themselves. Finally, at his urgent solicitation, they agreed, but as soon as he had left the lodge they changed their minds. Champlain returned and upbraided them as children who could not hold fast to their word. They replied that they feared that he would be lost in the wild north country, and among the treacherous Nipissings.
"But," replied Champlain, "this young man, Vignau, has been to their country, and did not find the road or the people so bad as you have said."
"Nicholas," demanded Tessouat, "did you say that you had been to the Nipissings?"
"Yes," he replied, "I have been there,"
"You are a liar," returned the unceremonious host; "you know very well that you slept here among my children every night, and got up again every morning; and if you ever went to the Nipissings, it must have been when you were asleep. How can you be so impudent as to lie to your chief, and so wicked as to risk his life among so many dangers? He ought to kill you with tortures worse than those with which we kill our enemies."
Vignau held out stoutly for a time, but finally broke down and confessed his treachery. This "most impudent liar," as Champlain calls him, seems to have had no more substantial motive for his outrageous fabrication than vanity and the love of notoriety. Champlain spurned him from his presence, and in bitter disappointment retraced his steps to Montreal.
From the days of Champlain to the close of the period of French rule, and for many years thereafter, the Ottawa was known as the main thoroughfare from Montreal to the great west. Up these waters generation after generation of fur-traders made their way, their canoes laden with goods, to be exchanged at remote posts on the Assiniboine, the Saskatchewan, or the Athabasca, for skins brought in by all the surrounding tribes. Long before the first settler came to clear the forest and make a home for himself in the wilderness, these banks echoed to the shouts of French
voyageurs and Indian canoe-men, and the gay songs of Old Canada. Many a weary hour of paddling under a hot midsummer sun, and many a long and toilsome portage, were lightened by the rollicking chorus of "En roulant ma boule," or the tender refrain of "A la claire fontaine." These inimitable folk-songs became in time a link between the old days of the fur-trade and the later period of the lumber traffic. It is indeed not so many years ago that one might sit on the banks of the Ottawa, in the long summer evenings, and, as the mighty rafts of logs floated past, catch the familiar refrain, softened by distance:
Rouli, roulant, ma boule roulant,
En roulant ma boule roulant,
En roulant ma boule.