It was late in the afternoon when we arrived at Laprairie, that little old Canadian town on the St Lawrence, where passengers take the steamer to Montreal. Here was celebrating some kind of fête which had brought a procession of nuns into the street, around whom were congregated groups of smiling children in their holiday dresses. I entered a church, which I found nearly deserted. A few of the poorer sort of persons were at prayer, saying their aves and paters by the rosary—not, as is sometimes supposed, through voluntary devotion, but in performance of appointed penances, which they make haste to get through. Some funeral ceremony seemed to be in preparation; for the church was dark, and a catafalque near the entrance gave me a startling sensation of awe. All that Laprairie could show us was soon beheld; but our usual fortune had attended us to the last, and we were again too late for the steamer. It would not cross again till the morrow; yet there was the city of Montreal distinctly visible before our eyes. From the quay we could discern, down the river, the tin roof of the convent of Grayfriars, glittering brightly in the descending sun. In fact, the whole city was glittering, for every where its spires and roofs shone with a sheeting of the Cornish material, which somehow or other, in this climate, seems to resist oxidisation. In other respects, the scene was not remarkable, except that there was the river—the broad, free, and magnificent St Lawrence, with its rapids and its isles. Nuns’ Isle was above us, and abreast of the city, with its fortress, was the green St Helen’s, said to be musical with the notes of birds, and fragrant with its flowers and verdure.
We were regretting the premature departure of the steamer, when one of our party came to announce that some Canadian boatmen were willing to take us over in a batteau, if we would embark without delay. It was nine miles, and the rapids were high; but we were informed that our ferrymen were born to the oar, and might confidently be trusted with our lives. We therefore lost no time in stowing ourselves, and part of our luggage, into a mere shell of a boat, manned by half-a-dozen Canadians, who pulled us into deep water with an air and a motion peculiarly their own. Once fairly embarked, there was something not unpleasant in finding ourselves upon the St Lawrence in a legitimate manner; for steamers were yet a novelty in those waters, and were regarded by the watermen with the same kind of contempt which an old English mail-coachman feels, in the bottom of his soul, for stokers and railways. Finding ourselves, by a lucky accident, thus agreeably launched, we naturally desired to hear a genuine Canadian boat-song, and were not long in making the oarsmen understand that an augmentation of their pay would be cheerfully afforded, if they would but favour us with music. Every one has heard the beautiful words of Tom Moore, inspired by a similar adventure. He says of the familiar air to which they are set, that though critics may think it trifling, it is for him rich with that charm which is given by association to every little memorial of by-gone scenes and feelings. I cannot say that the air of our voyageurs was the same; yet I am quite inclined to think that the words which he gives as the burden of the Canadian boat-song which he heard so often, were those to which we were treated. Barbarous, indeed, was their dialect if they attempted to give us any thing so definite as the chanson,
“Dans mon chemin j’ai rencontré
Deux cavaliers, trés-bien montés;”
but there was a perpetually recurring refrain which sounded like do—daw—donny-day, and which I suppose to be a sort of French fol-de-rol, but which I can easily conceive to have been, as our English Anacreon reports it—
“A l’ombre d’un bois je m’en vais jouer,
A l’ombre d’un bois je m’en vais danser.”
Rude as was the verse and the music, however, I must own that, in its place on that majestic river, as we were approaching the rapids whose white caps were already leaping about our frail bark, with the meditative light of sunset throwing a mellow radiance over all, there was something that appealed very strongly to the imagination in that simple Canadian air. I am not musical, and cannot recall it; yet even now it will sometimes ring in my ears, when I go back in fancy to that bright season of my life when I too was a voyageur; and I have often been happy that accident thus gave me the pleasure of hearing what I shall never hear again, and what travellers on the St Lawrence are every year less and less likely to hear repeated. Indeed, I am almost able to adopt every word which Moore has so poetically appended to his song. “I remember,” says he, “when we entered at sunset upon one of those beautiful lakes into which the St Lawrence so grandly and so unexpectedly opens, I have heard this simple air with a pleasure which the finest conceptions of the finest masters have never given me; and now there is not a note of it which does not recall to my memory the dip of our oars in the St Lawrence, the flight of our boat down the rapids, and all the new and fanciful impressions to which my heart was alive during the whole of this very interesting voyage.”
But our trip was not all poetry and song. When we were fairly upon those bright-looking rapids, we found our little nutshell quite too heavily loaded, and were forced to feel our evident danger with somewhat of alarm. The billows whirled and tossed us about, till our Canadians themselves became frightened, and foolishly throwing up their oars, began to cross themselves and to call on the Virgin and all the saints. The tutelar of the St Lawrence is said to inhabit hard by, at St Anne’s,—but such was our want of confidence in his power to interfere, that we met this outbreak of Romish devotion with a protest so vehement that it would have surprised the celebrated diet of Spires. Certain it is that, on resuming their oars, the fellows did much more for us than their aspirations had accomplished, when unaided by efforts. We soon began to enjoy the dancing of our batteau, which gradually became less violent, and was rather inspiring. Still, as no one but a coward would sport in safety with dangers which were once sufficient to appal, let me confess that I believe I should be thankful that my journey and my mortal life were not ended together in those dangerous waters. I trust it was not without some inward gratitude to Him who numbers the very hairs of our head, that we found ourselves again in smooth tides, and were soon landed in safety on the quay at Montreal.