Читать книгу Reminiscences of a Canadian Pioneer for the last Fifty Years: An Autobiography - Samuel Thompson - Страница 20

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The St. Lawrence River was gained, and escaping with a few days' quarantine at Grosse Isle, we reached Quebec, there to be transferred to a fine steamer for Montreal. At Lachine we were provided with large barges, here called batteaux, which sufficed to accommodate the whole of the Asia's passengers going west, with their luggage. They were drawn by Canadian ponies, lively and perfectly hardy little animals, which, with their French-Canadian drivers, amused us exceedingly. While loading up, we were favoured with one of those accidental historical "bits"—as a painter would say—which occur so rarely in a lifetime. The then despot of the North-West, Sir George Simpson, was just starting for the seat of his government via the Ottawa River. With him were some half-dozen officers, civil and military, and the party was escorted by six or eight Nor'-West canoes—each thirty or forty feet long, and manned by some twenty-four Indians, in the full glory of war-paint, feathers, and most dazzling costumes. To see these stately boats, and their no less stately crews, gliding with measured stroke, in gallant procession, on their way to the vasty wilderness of the Hudson's Bay territory, with the British flag displayed at each prow, was a sight never to be forgotten. And as they paddled, the woods echoed far and wide to the strange weird sounds of their favourite boat-song:—