Crews and canoes assemble above Lachine, nine miles from Montreal, ninety or one hundred canoes with eight men to each, including steersman, and a pilot to each ten canoes. Thirty or forty guides there will, perhaps, be to the yearly brigade--men who lead the way and prevent waste of time by following wrong water courses. And it is a picturesque enough scene to stir the dullest blood, spite of all the curé’s warning. Voyageurs and hunters are dressed in buckskin with gayest of silk bands round hair and neck. Partners are pompous in ruffles and lace and gold braid, with brass-handled pistols and daggers in belt. In each canoe go the cargoes--two-thirds merchandise, one-third provisions--oilcloth to cover it, tarpaulin for a tent, tow lines, bark and gum for repairs, kettles, dippers and big sponges to bail out water. As the canoes are loaded, they are launched and circle about on the river waiting for the signal of the head steersman. The chief steersman’s steel-shod pole is held overhead. It drops--five hundred paddles dip as with one arm, and there shoots out from the ninety-foot canoes the small, narrow, swift craft of the partners, racing ahead to be at the rendezvous before the cargoes arrive. Freight packers ashore utter a shout that makes the echoes ring. The voyageurs strike up a song. The paddles dip to the time of the song. The deep-throated chorus dies away in echo. The life of the _Pays d’en Haut_ has begun. Ste. Anne’s--the patron saint of canoemen--is the last chapel spire they will see for many a year. The canoemen cross themselves in prayer. Then the Lake of the Two Mountains comes, and the Long Sault Rapids and the Chaudiere Falls, of what is now Ottawa City, and the Chat Rapids and thirty-six other portages in the four hundred miles up the Ottawa from Montreal, each portage being reckoned as many “pipes” long as the voyageur smokes, when carrying the cargo overland in ninety-pound packs on his back. Leaving the Mattawa at the headwaters of the Ottawa, the brigades strike westward for the Great Lakes, down stream through Nipissing Lake and French River to Lake Huron; easier going now with the current and sheer delight once the canoes are out on the clear waters of the lake, where if the wind is favorable, blankets are hoisted for a sail and the canoes scud across to the Sault. But it is not always easy going. Where French River comes out of Nipissing Lake, ten crosses mark where voyageurs have found a watery grave, and sometimes on the lake the heavily laden canoes are working straight against a head wind that sends choppy waves ice-cold slapping into their laps till oilcloth must be bound round the prow to keep from shipping water where a wave-crest dips over and the canoe has failed to climb. Even mounting the waves and keeping the gun’els clear of the wash, at every paddle dip the spray splashes the voyageur to his waist. The “old wolves” smoke and say nothing. The bowman bounces back