Streaked foam told the voyageurs where they were approaching rapids.
Alert as a hawk, the bowman stroked for the shore; and his stroke was
answered by all paddles. If the water were high enough to carry the
canoes above rocks, and the rapids were not too violent, several of the
boatmen leaped out to knees in water, and "tracked" the canoes up
stream; but this was unusual with loaded craft. The bowman steadied
the beached keel. Each man landed with pack on his back, lighted his
pipe, and trotted away over portages so dank and slippery that only a
moccasined foot could gain hold. On long portages, camp-fires were
kindled and the kettles slung on the crotched sticks for the evening
meal. At night, the voyageurs slept under the overturned canoes, or
lay on the sand with bare faces to the sky. Morning mist had not risen
till all the boats were once more breasting the flood of the Ottawa.
For a month the canoe prows met the current when a portage lifted the
fleet out of the Ottawa into a shallow stream flowing toward Lake
Nipissing, and from Lake Nipissing to Lake Huron. The change was a
welcome relief. The canoes now rode with the current; and when a wind
sprang up astern, blanket sails were hoisted that let the boatmen lie
back, paddles athwart. Going with the stream, the _voyageurs_ would
"run"--"_sauter les rapides_"--the safest of the cataracts. Bowman,
not steersman, was the pilot of such "runs." A faint, far swish as of
night wind, little forward leaps and swirls of the current, the blur of
trees on either bank, were signs to the bowman.
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