The guides were a little restless under the idle regime of our lazy
camp, and urged us to set out upon some adventure. Ferdinand was like
the uncouth swain in Lycidas. Sitting upon the bundles of camp equipage
on the shore, and crying,--
"To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new,"
he led us forth to seek the famous fishing grounds on Lake Kenogami.
We skirted the eastern end of Lake St. John in our two canoes, and
pushed up La Belle Riviere to Hebertville, where all the children turned
out to follow our procession through the village. It was like the
train that tagged after the Pied Piper of Hamelin. We embarked again,
surrounded by an admiring throng, at the bridge where the main street
crossed a little stream, and paddled up it, through a score of back
yards and a stretch of reedy meadows, where the wild and tame ducks fed
together, tempting the sportsman to sins of ignorance. We crossed the
placid Lac Vert, and after a carry of a mile along the high-road toward
Chicoutimi, turned down a steep hill and pitched our tents on a crescent
of silver sand, with the long, fair water of Kenogami before us.
It is amazing to see how quickly these woodsmen can make a camp. Each
one knew precisely his share of the enterprise. One sprang to chop a dry
spruce log into fuel for a quick fire, and fell a harder tree to keep us
warm through the night. Another stripped a pile of boughs from a balsam
for the beds. Another cut the tent-poles from a neighbouring thicket.
Another unrolled the bundles and made ready the cooking utensils. As if
by magic, the miracle of the camp was accomplished.--
"The bed was made, the room was fit,
By punctual eve the stars were lit"--
but Greygown always insists upon completing that quotation from
Stevenson in her own voice; for this is the way it ends,--
"When we put up, my ass and I,
At God's green caravanserai."
Our permanent camp was another day's voyage down the lake, on a beach
opposite the Point Ausable. There the water was contracted to a narrow
strait, and in the swift current, close to the point, the great trout
had fixed their spawning-bed from time immemorial. It was the first week
in September, and the magnates of the lake were already assembling--the
Common Councilmen and the Mayor and the whole Committee of Seventy.
There were giants in that place, rolling lazily about, and chasing each
other on the surface of the water. "Look, M'sieu'!" cried Francois, in
excitement, as we lay at anchor in the gray morning twilight; "one like
a horse has just leaped behind us; I assure you, big like a horse!"
But the fish were shy and dour. Old Castonnier, the guardian of the
lake, lived in his hut on the shore, and flogged the water, early and
late, every day with his home-made flies. He was anchored in his dugout
close beside us, and grinned with delight as he saw his over-educated
trout refuse my best casts. "They are here, M'sieu', for you can see
them," he said, by way of discouragement, "but it is difficult to take
them. Do you not find it so?"
In the back of my fly-book I discovered a tiny phantom minnow--a dainty
affair of varnished silk, as light as a feather--and quietly attached it
to the leader in place of the tail-fly. Then the fun began.
One after another the big fish dashed at that deception, and we played
and netted them, until our score was thirteen, weighing altogether
thirty-five pounds, and the largest five pounds and a half. The guardian
was mystified and disgusted. He looked on for a while in silence, and
then pulled up anchor and clattered ashore. He must have made some
inquiries and reflections during the day, for that night he paid a visit
to our camp. After telling bear stories and fish stories for an hour or
two by the fire, he rose to depart, and tapping his forefinger solemnly
upon my shoulder, delivered himself as follows:--
"You can say a proud thing when you go home, M'sieu'--that you have
beaten the old Castonnier. There are not many fishermen who can say
that. But," he added, with confidential emphasis, "c'etait votre sacre
p'tit poisson qui a fait cela."
That was a touch of human nature, my rusty old guardian, more welcome
to me than all the morning's catch. Is there not always a "confounded
little minnow" responsible for our failures? Did you ever see a
school-boy tumble on the ice without stooping immediately to re-buckle
the strap of his skates? And would not Ignotus have painted a
masterpiece if he could have found good brushes and a proper canvas?
Life's shortcomings would be bitter indeed if we could not find excuses
for them outside of ourselves. And as for life's successes--well, it is
certainly wholesome to remember how many of them are due to a fortunate
position and the proper tools.
Our tent was on the border of a coppice of young trees. It was pleasant
to be awakened by a convocation of birds at sunrise, and to watch the
shadows of the leaves dance out upon our translucent roof of canvas.
All the birds in the bush are early, but there are so many of them that
it is difficult to believe that every one can be rewarded with a worm.
Here in Canada those little people of the air who appear as transient
guests of spring and autumn in the Middle States, are in their summer
home and breeding-place. Warblers, named for the magnolia and the
myrtle, chestnut-sided, bay-breasted, blue-backed, and black-throated,
flutter and creep along the branches with simple lisping music.
Kinglets, ruby-crowned and golden-crowned, tiny, brilliant sparks of
life, twitter among the trees, breaking occasionally into clearer,
sweeter songs. Companies of redpolls and crossbills pass chirping
through the thickets, busily seeking their food. The fearless, familiar
chickadee repeats his name merrily, while he leads his family to explore
every nook and cranny of the wood. Cedar wax-wings, sociable wanderers,
arrive in numerous flocks. The Canadians call them "recollets," because
they wear a brown crest of the same colour as the hoods of the monks who
came with the first settlers to New France. They are a songless tribe,
although their quick, reiterated call as they take to flight has
given them the name of chatterers. The beautiful tree-sparrows and the
pine-siskins are more melodious, and the slate-coloured juncos, flitting
about the camp, are as garrulous as chippy-birds. All these varied notes
come and go through the tangle of morning dreams. And now the noisy
blue-jay is calling "Thief--thief--thief!" in the distance, and a pair
of great pileated woodpeckers with crimson crests are laughing loudly in
the swamp over some family joke. But listen! what is that harsh creaking
note? It is the cry of the Northern shrike, of whom tradition says that
he catches little birds and impales them on sharp thorns. At the sound
of his voice the concert closes suddenly and the singers vanish into
thin air. The hour of music is over; the commonplace of day has begun.
And there is my lady Greygown, already up and dressed, standing by the
breakfast-table and laughing at my belated appearance.
But the birds were not our only musicians at Kenogami. French Canada is
one of the ancestral homes of song. Here you can still listen to those
quaint ballads which were sung centuries ago in Normandie and Provence.
"A la Claire Fontaine," "Dans Paris y a-t-une Brune plus Belle que le
Jour," "Sur le Pont d'Avignon," "En Roulant ma Boule," "La Poulette
Grise," and a hundred other folk-songs linger among the peasants and
voyageurs of these northern woods. You may hear
"Malbrouck s'en va-t-en guerre--
Mironton, mironton, mirontaine,"
and
"Isabeau s'y promene
Le long de son jardin,"
chanted in the farmhouse or the lumber shanty, to the tunes which have
come down from an unknown source, and never lost their echo in the
hearts of the people.
Our Ferdinand was a perfect fountain of music. He had a clear tenor
voice, and solaced every task and shortened every voyage with melody. "A
song, Ferdinand, a jolly song," the other men would say, as the canoes
went sweeping down the quiet lake. And then the leader would strike up a
well-known air, and his companions would come in on the refrain, keeping
time with the stroke of their paddles. Sometimes it would be a merry
ditty:
"My father had no girl but me,
And yet he sent me off to sea;
Leap, my little Cecilia."
Or perhaps it was:
"I've danced so much the livelong day,--
Dance, my sweetheart, let's be gay,--
I've fairly danced my shoes away,--
Till evening.
Dance, my pretty, dance once more;
Dance, until we break the floor."
But more frequently the song was touched with a plaintive pleasant
melancholy. The minstrel told how he had gone into the woods and heard
the nightingale, and she had confided to him that lovers are often
unhappy. The story of La Belle Francoise was repeated in minor
cadences--how her sweetheart sailed away to the wars, and when he came
back the village church bells were ringing, and he said to himself that
Francoise had been faithless, and the chimes were for her marriage; but
when he entered the church it was her funeral that he saw, for she had
died of love. It is strange how sorrow charms us when it is distant and
visionary. Even when we are happiest we enjoy making music
"Of old, unhappy, far-off things."
"What is that song which you are singing, Ferdinand?" asks the lady, as
she hears him humming behind her in the canoe.
"Ah, madame, it is the chanson of a young man who demands of his blonde
why she will not marry him. He says that he has waited long time, and
the flowers are falling from the rose-tree, and he is very sad."
"And does she give a reason?"
"Yes, madame--that is to say, a reason of a certain sort; she declares
that she is not quite ready; he must wait until the rose-tree adorns
itself again."
"And what is the end--do they get married at last?"
"But I do not know, madame. The chanson does not go so far. It ceases
with the complaint of the young man. And it is a very uncertain
affair--this affair of the heart--is it not?"
Then, as if he turned from such perplexing mysteries to something plain
and sure and easy to understand, he breaks out into the jolliest of all
Canadian songs:
"My bark canoe that flies, that flies,
Hola! my bark canoe!"