Towards the middle of the afternoon, the principal repast takes place. All the provisions which the guests have brought are produced and spread on a long table prepared for the purpose. Maple water and maple sugar are the accompaniments of every dish. When all the meats have been discussed, the feast winds up by the celebrated maple omelet. Whatever Soyer or Brillat Savarin might say, it is a pleasant dish, though too rich to be partaken of copiously, and according to every hygienic principle, very apt to be difficult of digestion. It consists of eggs pretty well boiled and broken into maple syrup, slightly diluted and piping hot. After a meal of this kind, exercise is indispensable, and it is the custom to get up a series of dances until the hour of breaking up.
"Friends," exclaims the host, when they are about to retire from the table, "I am glad to find that you have done justice to my syrup and sugar. It is the best sign that they were good. It keeps up the reputation of my sugary. Try to retain the taste of them till next year, when I hope we shall all meet again under these same trees."
A round of applause follows these words, and the whole company breaks out into hunting songs in honor of the host.
"Now," resumes he, "we must by all means have a dance. I never let my friends go without at least one, and I intend to join in the first myself. Come, hurry up, one and all. I see a suspicious cloud or two in the sky yonder, and we may possibly have a storm before the day is over."
A fiddler is soon found and the dance is organized. He leans his left cheek lovingly on his instrument, and has just run his bow across the discordant strings, when suddenly a loud crash is heard in the gorges of the mountain. It is the roar of the storm. The maple tops writhe and twist in the sweep of the winds that come up in eddies from the river far beneath. The sky is suddenly darkened. The snow falls thick and fast. These portents are sufficiently significant to startle the whole party. The dance is broken up and every one prepares to depart as fast as he can.
Cary Singleton and his men had a sterner duty to perform by the maple trees. They cut them down and of the trunks constructed a number of rafts wherewith to transport the baggage and provisions of the army across the St. Lawrence.
At the same time, the Indians of the party were detailed to build birch-bark canoes. With their long knives they swept around the slender trunks, making an incision as regular and precise as any surgeon might have done on a human limb destined to amputation. The first circle was made about one foot from the ground, the other about three feet from the branches where the tree began to taper. This was to secure slips of about equal length. They then ran down their knives longitudinally from the edge of one circle to the edge of the other circle, making four or five sections according to the size of the tree. This was to obtain slips of about equal breadth. They next inserted the point of their knives under the layer of bark, and with rapid action of the arm pulled off slip after slip. As these slips fell upon the ground they rolled up in scrolls, but other Indians as quickly unrolled them, stitched them together with light thongs of moose or buckskin, and sharpened them at the two extremities. In this way, three men could build a good sized canoe, within two hours. There remained only the process of drying which was not indispensable indeed, but contributed to the lightness and safety of the craft.
So soon as the first canoe was made, Cary Singleton launched it, and, accompanied by two men, made the reconnoissance which so much frightened the gossipping laundresses. He did not approach the north shore as near as he had intended, for fear that the women might give the alarm and betray his design, but he saw enough through his glass to enable him to report that the secluded basin, sheltered by dense trees, and known as Wolfe's Cove, would be a favorable place for the landing of the invading army. Accordingly, after three days devoted to the repose of his troops, and the replenishing of his stores from the neighboring farm houses, Arnold, on the night of the 13th November, undertook to cross the St. Lawrence. He was favored by darkness and a storm, and from ten in the evening till four in the morning, by the aid of thirty birch-bark canoes and a few rafts, he was engaged in the hazardous work. Backwards and forwards the fragile vessels plied silently over the broad bosom of the river, bearing a freight of taciturn armed men, on the point of whose muskets literally trembled the fate of Canada. As the morning dawned the whole of the Continental army, with the exception of 160 men who were left at Levis, was safe in the recess of Wolfe's Cove, and Arnold had won another stake in the lottery of war.