From the days of Champlain to the close of the period of French rule, and for many years thereafter, the Ottawa was known as the main thoroughfare from Montreal to the great west. Up these waters generation after generation of fur-traders made their way, their canoes laden with goods, to be exchanged at remote posts on the Assiniboine, the Saskatchewan, or the Athabasca, for skins brought in by all the surrounding tribes. Long before the first settler came to clear the forest and make a home for himself in the wilderness, these banks echoed to the shouts of French _voyageurs_ and Indian canoe-men, and the gay songs of Old Canada. Many a weary hour of paddling under a hot midsummer sun, and many a long and toilsome portage, were lightened by the rollicking chorus of "En roulant ma boule," or the tender refrain of "A la claire fontaine." These inimitable folk-songs became in time a link between the old days of the fur-trade and the later period of the lumber traffic. It is indeed not so many years ago that one might sit on the banks of the Ottawa, in the long summer evenings, and, as the mighty rafts of logs floated past, catch the familiar refrain, softened by distance: Rouli, roulant, ma boule roulant, En roulant ma boule roulant, En roulant ma boule. VII THE RED RIVER OF THE NORTH But, in the ancient woods the Indian old, Unequal to the chase, Sighs as he thinks of all the paths untold, No longer trodden by his fleeting race, And, westward, on far-stretching prairies damp, The savage shout, and mighty bison tramp Roll thunder with the lifting mists of morn. MAIR.