What fickle fate, what strange mischance Has brought this song of sunny France To ride upon the blizzard crest That mantles o'er the wild Northwest? To find its echoes sweet In barren butte and stark cliff-side, Whose beetling summits override The fierce Missouri's murky tide; To rouse the scurrying feet Of antelope and lean coyote; To hear its last, long, witching note, Caught in the hoot-owl's dismal throat, Sweep by on pinions fleet. Full far these errant sons of Gaul Have journeyed from the gray sea-wall That fronts on fair Marseilles, But still the spirit of their race Bids them to turn a dauntless face On whate'er Fates prevail. The storm may drive to bush and den The creatures of the field and fen, But neither storm nor darksome night Nor ice-bound stream nor frowning height Can check or turn or put to flight These iron-hearted men. Across the flats of stinging sands, Through thickets, woods, and sere uplands, Their weary pathway shows; Toward some far fort of logs and stakes Deep hidden in the willow brakes, Right onward still it goes Persistently, an unblazed track, Bent from the cheerless bivouac Of some poor, prairie Indian band Whose chill and flimsy tepees stand Half buried in the snows. Yet what of costly merchandise That wealth may covet, commerce prize, Can these adventurers wring From that ill-fed, barbarian horde As seems to them a meet reward For all the risk and toil and pain They've suffered on the winter plain Amid their journeying? Ah, wealth enough is garnered there, Though not of gold or jewels rare, To rouse the white man's longing greed And send his servants forth with speed To lay the treasure bare. The trinkets cheap these traders brought The savages have dearly bought, Persuaded guilelessly to pay A ten times doubled usury In furs of beavers and of minks, Of silver fox and spotted lynx. For all their rich and varied store Of peltries, gathered from the shore, The wood, the prairie, and the hill By trapper's art and hunter's skill, The traders' heavy packs now fill. A journey far those furs must go From these wild fastnesses of snow, By travois, pack, and deep bateau; By keel-boat, sloop, and merchantman Till half a hemisphere they span, Ere they will lie, at last, displayed By boulevard and esplanade In Europe's buzzing marts of trade. These marten skins, so soft and warm, May wrap some Russian princess' form And shield her from the Arctic storm That howls o'er Kroonstadt's bay; That robe, a huge black bear which, dressed, May cloak some warrior monarch's breast As, gazing o'er the battle crest, He sees the foemen's legions pressed In panic, from the fray. But it is not the destinies Which may, perchance, beyond the seas, Await these rare commodities, That chiefly signify, Though king and knight and princess fair Should leave the coteaus stripped and bare Their pride to gratify. But this; that in the storm to-night.