Then onwards, ever onwards toward the West fared steadily this old French voyageur, and as he passed the dreaded Raven Cape he trolled a catch, "_Un noir corbeau_", to ward all ill and evil from his sturdy craft. So sped unharmed, swift-paddling toward the broad and sunlit shallows of Saint Peter's lake, and ever westwards to the Royal Isle where Montreal's green height looks down upon its shadowy reflex in Saint Lawrence's wave.
On, on he sped and ever to the West, land-locked at times in prairie-bound canals; then pulling vigorously, the rapids past, along the River's narrowing polished curve, with oar stroke, swift and sweeping, keeping time to hit of merry raftsmen on the Sault.
Fresh-hearted André! All the wholesome joys to which his simple life was consecrate were his as on he voyaged; his eventide brought joy and calm and light-of-evening peace. But once he would have tarried--as alights a wearied sea-mew on some lonely isle--when, paddling slow and noiselessly he steered his craft among the leafy waterways of that Arcadian Venice of our North: the Thousand Isles. His woodsman's heart beat high when, gliding silently past sunny glades and darkling glens, he heard the wavelets lap the crinkling sands and saw the water glint against the slopes fringed deep with June's lush green.
At times he paused, the paddle braced, and leaned thereon his weight; the while, his lungs inflate, he drew deep breaths of fragrance balsamic that flowed in counter currents, sensate, warm, from out the depths of cedar thickets gray, and red, and white. And then away, away he sped past gardens gay with summer blooms, past emerald lawns set round by sapphire waves. And here and there an islet laughed at him--a tiny patch of verdure overhung by one white birch that glistered in the sun.
And every night a strange enchantment wrought upon his spirit when, beneath the stars, on some long reach that narrowed suddenly, embraced by banks converging, forest clad, the dugout drifted 'twixt two firmaments. Then André dreamed of pool and river reach and ancient pine o'er-hanging torrents wild, far distant on the Upper Saguenay; and summer dwellers on those Fortunate Isles were ware at midnight of a singing voice and fragment of a song, like some last chord drawn lingeringly across responsive strings: