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.”