"Our voices keep tune and our oars keep time."
Certainly the refrain has more of the spirit of the boatman's song:—
"Row, brothers, row; the stream runs fast,
The rapids are near and the daylight's past."
The true colouring of the scene is reflected in
"We'll sing at Ste. Anne;"
and—
"Ottawa's tide, this trembling moon,
Shall see us float over thy surges soon."
Ste. Anne really had a high distinction among all the resting-places on the fur trader's route. It was the last point in the departure from Montreal Island. Religion and sentiment for a hundred years had consecrated it, and a short distance above it, on an eminence overlooking the narrows—the real mouth of the Ottawa—was a venerable ruin, now overgrown with ivy and young trees, "Château brillant," a castle speaking of border foray and Indian warfare generations ago.