Part 4 (2/2)

Your Spanish grandee of the Missouri Coht sit in a counting-house or fur post adding up rows of figures, and your Scotch merchant chaffer with Indians over the value of a beaver-skin As for Pierre, give hi past wooded banks with a throb of the keel to the current and the whistle of wild-fowl overhead; clear sky above with a feathering of wind clouds, clear sky beloith a feathering of wind clouds, and the canoe between like a bird at poise Soeurs_ hoist a blanket sail, and the canoe skiathers force and whirls forward in sharp eddies and racing leaps each _voyageur_ knohat to expect No man asks questions The bowman stands up with his eyes to the fore and steel-shod pole ready Every eye is on that pole Presently coin to race The canoe no longer glides It vaults--springs--bounds, with a shi+ver of live waters under the keel and a buoyant rise to her prow that mounts the crest of each wave fast as wave pursues wave A fanged rock thrusts up in mid-stream One deft push of the pole Each paddler takes the cue; and the canoe shoots past the danger straight as an arrow, righting herself to a new course by another lightning sweep of the pole and paddles

[Illustration: Traders running a mackinaw or keel-boat down the rapids of Slave River without unloading]

But the waters gather as if to throw themselves forward The roar becomes a crash As if htened bow lifts A white dash of spray Shedown-stream below a small waterfall

Not a word is spoken to indicate that it is anything unusual to _sauter les rapides_, as the _voyageurs_ say The hs; for Jean, or Ba'tiste, or the dandy of the crew, got his moccasins hen the canoe took water They all settle forward

One paddler pauses to bail out water with his hat

Thus the loaterfalls are run without a _portage_ Co back this ith canoes loaded to the water-line, there

If the rapids be short, ater enough to carry the loaded canoe high above rocks thatout in the water, but one man who remains to steady the craft; and the canoe is ”tracked” up-streaerous, each _voyageur_ lands, with pack on his back and pack-straps across his forehead, and runs along the shore A long _portage_ is eur_ se_ of ait on the hottest days without one word of coe_ 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 ca fire to keep the wolves off,at the end of a skewered stick; sometimes to the _ of dog-bells in frosty air, a long journey overland by dog-sled to the trading-post; so fury which sweeps over the northland, turning earth and air to a white darkness; so under a snow-drift for war his blanket about his were the every-day life of the French trapper

At present there is only one of the great fur co--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 coo

The roadside tramp of to-day is a poor representative of Robin Hoods and Rob Roys; and the French trapper of shay 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 Willia, 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 soo I was on a northern river stea-posts A brawl seeers What was theout 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 French which the French trappers'

ancestors brought froo, about the fickle lady and the faded roses and the vain regrets Then--was it possible?--these grizzled fellows, dressed in tinkers' tatters, were singing--what? A song of the _Grand Monarque_ which has led ar which one would expect to hear in northern wilds--

”Malbrouck s'on va-t-en guerre Mais quand reviendra a-t-il?”

Three foes assailed the trapper alone in the wilds The first danger was froed on by rival traders This danger the French trapperhie than any other fur trader succeeded in doing The third foe was the e of human criminals

Perhaps the day after the trapper had shot his first deer he discovered fine footprints like a child's hand on the snow around the carcass He recognises the trail of otter or pekan or mink It would be useless to bait a deadfall with meat when an unpolluted feast lies on the snow The man takes one of his small traps and places it across the line of approach This trap is buried beneath snow or brush Every trace of ged across the snow Po touched He may even handle the trap with deer-hide Pekan travel in pairs

Besides, the dead deer will be likely to attract er; so the man sets a circle of traps round the carcass

The next h hope Very little of the deer re and little, have been there Why, then, is there no capture? One trap has been pulled up, sprung, and partly broken Another carried a little distance off and duht a pekan; but the prisoner had been worried and torn to atoms Another was tampered with from behind and exposed for very deviltry So forest creatures few are h to kill when they have full stomachs, or to eat a trapped brother with untrapped th away

The French trapper rumbles out so a piece of steel like a cheese-tester's instru ht have saved himself the trouble The next day he finds the poisoned meat mauled and spoiled so that no ani of the deer but picked bones So the trapper tries a deadfall for the thief Again he ht have spared himself the trouble His next visit shows the deadfall torn froer to the thief