Part 21

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!"

III.

THE ISLAND POOL.

Among the mountains there is a gorge. And in the gorge there is a river. And in the river there is a pool. And in the pool there is an island. And on the island, for four happy days, there was a camp.

It was by no means an easy matter to establish ourselves in that lonely place. The river, though not remote from civilisation, is practically inaccessible for nine miles of its course by reason of the steepness of its banks, which are long, shaggy precipices, and the fury of its current, in which no boat can live. We heard its voice as we approached through the forest, and could hardly tell whether it was far away or near.

There is a perspective of sound as well as of sight, and one must have some idea of the size of a noise before one can judge of its distance. A mosquito's horn in a dark room may seem like a trumpet on the battlements; and the tumult of a mighty stream heard through an unknown stretch of woods may appear like the babble of a mountain brook close at hand.

But when we came out upon the bald forehead of a burnt cliff and looked down, we realised the grandeur and beauty of the unseen voice that we had been following. A river of splendid strength went leaping through the chasm five hundred feet below us, and at the foot of two snow-white falls, in an oval of dark topaz water, traced with curves of floating foam, lay the solitary island.