En roulant ma boule, Rouli, roulant, ma boule roulant, En roulant ma boule roulant, En roulant ma boule,
was changed to the pathetic refrain of a song then as now dear to the heart of French Canadians--_A la claire fontaine_.
In the cool twilight the men paddled on, placing mile after mile between them and { 24} Montreal. Presently the river widened into a lakelike expanse. The moon rose and shot its soft gleam across the water. No ripple stirred the smooth surface, save where the paddles dipped and the prow of each canoe cut like a knife through the stream. Belated birds flew overhead, making for home. A stag broke through the bushes on the farther shore, caught sight of the canoes, gazed at them for a moment, and then disappeared. It was growing late when La Vérendrye, from the foremost canoe, gave the word to camp. The canoes turned shoreward, lightly touching the shelving bank, and the men sprang nimbly to the land. Fires were lighted, the tents were pitched, and everything was made snug for the night. The hunters had not been idle during the day, and a dozen brace of birds were soon twirling merrily on the spit, while venison steaks added appetizing odours.
Their hunger satisfied, the men lounged about on the grass, smoking and listening to the yarns of some famous story-teller. He would tell them, perhaps, the pathetic story of Cadieux, who, on this very stream, had held the dreaded Iroquois at bay while his comrades escaped. Cadieux himself escaped the Iroquois, only to fall a victim to the _folie des bois_, or { 25} madness of the woods, wandering aimlessly in circles, until, famished and exhausted, he lay down to die. When his comrades returned in search of him, they found beside him a birch bark on which he had written his death chant:
Thou little rock of the high hill, attend! Hither I come this last campaign to end! Ye echoes soft, give ear unto my sigh; In languishing I speedily shall die.
Dear little birds, your dulcet harmony What time you sing makes this life dear to me. Ah! had I wings that I might fly like you; Ere two days sped I should be happy too.
Then, as the camp-fires sank into heaps of glowing embers, each man would wrap his blanket about him and with kind mother earth for his pillow and only the dome of heaven above him, would sleep as only those may whose resting-place is in the free air of the wilderness.