It was a curious scene when a party of _coureurs de bois_ returned
from their rovings. Montreal was their harboring place, and they
conducted themselves much like the crew of a man-of-war paid off after
a long voyage. As long as their beaver-skins lasted, they set no
bounds to their riot. Every house in the place, we are told, was
turned into a drinking-shop. The newcomers were bedizened with a
strange mixture of French and Indian finery; while some of them, with
instincts more thoroughly savage, stalked about the streets as naked
as a Pottawottamie or a Sioux. The clamor of tongues was prodigious,
and gambling and drinking filled the day and the night. When at last
they were sober again, they sought absolution for their sins; nor
could the priests venture to bear too hard on their unruly penitents,
lest they should break wholly with the church and dispense
thenceforth with her sacraments.
[Footnote 54: From Chapter XVII of "The Old Regime in Canada."
Copyright, 1874, by Francis Parkman. Published by Little, Brown & Co.]
Under such leaders as Du Lhut, the _coureurs de bois_ built forts of
palisades at various points throughout the West and Northwest. They
had a post of this sort at Detroit some time before its permanent
settlement, as well as others on Lake Superior and in the valley of
the Mississippi. They occupied them as long as it suited their
purposes, and then abandoned them to the next comer. Michillimackinac
was, however, their chief resort; and thence they would set out, two
or three together, to roam for hundreds of miles through the endless
meshwork of interlocking lakes and rivers which seams the northern
wilderness.
No wonder that a year or two of bushranging spoiled them for
civilization. Tho not a very valuable member of society, and tho a
thorn in the side of princes and rulers, the _coureur de bois_ had his
uses, at least from an artistic point of view; and his strange figure,
sometimes brutally savage, but oftener marked with the lines of a
daredevil courage, and a reckless, thoughtless gaiety, will always be
joined to the memories of that grand world of woods which the
nineteenth century is fast civilizing out of existence. At least, he
is picturesque, and with his redskin companion serves to animate
forest scenery. Perhaps he could sometimes feel, without knowing that
he felt them, the charms of the savage nature that had adopted him.
Rude as he was, her voice may not always have been meaningless for one
who knew her haunts so well; deep recesses where, veiled in foliage,
some wild shy rivulet steals with timid music through breathless caves
of verdure; gulfs where feathered crags rise like castle walls, where
the noonday sun pierces with keen rays athwart the torrent, and the
mossed arms of fallen pines cast wavering shadows on the illumined
foam; pools of liquid crystal turned emerald in the reflected green of
impending woods; rocks on whose rugged front the gleam of sunlit
waters dances in quivering light; ancient trees hurled headlong by the
storm to dam the raging stream with their forlorn and savage ruin; or
the stern depths of immemorial forests, dim and silent as a cavern,
columned with innumerable trunks, each like an Atlas upholding its
world of leaves, and sweating perpetual moisture down its dark and
channelled rind; some strong in youth, some grisly with decrepit age,
nightmares of strange distortion, gnarled and knotted with wens and
goitres; roots intertwined beneath like serpents petrified in an agony
of contorted strife; green and glistening mosses carpeting the rough
ground, mantling the rocks, turning pulpy stumps to mounds of verdure,
and swathing fallen trunks as, bent in the impotence of rottenness,
they lie outstretched over knoll and hollow, like moldering reptiles
of the primeval world, while around, and on and through them, springs
the young growth that fattens on their decay--the forest devouring its
own dead. Or, to turn from its funereal shade to the light and life of
the open woodland, the sheen of sparkling lakes, and mountains basking
in the glory of the summer noon, flecked by the shadows of passing
clouds that sail on snowy wings across the azure.
Yet it would be false coloring to paint the half-savage _coureur de
bois_ as a romantic lover of nature. He liked the woods because they
emancipated him from restraint. He liked the lounging ease of the
camp-fire, and the license of Indian villages. His life has a dark and
ugly side.