current of one of the Canada rivers.

But we are talking of things that are fast fading away! The march of
mechanical invention is driving everything poetical before it. The
steamboats, which are fast dispelling the wildness and romance of our
lakes and rivers, and aiding to subdue the world into commonplace, are
proving as fatal to the race of the Canadian voyageurs as they have been
to that of the boatmen of the Mississippi. Their glory is departed. They
are no longer the lords of our internal seas, and the great navigators
of the wilderness. Some of them may still occasionally be seen coasting
the lower lakes with their frail barks, and pitching their camps
and lighting their fires upon the shores; but their range is fast
contracting to those remote waters and shallow and obstructed rivers
unvisited by the steamboat. In the course of years they will gradually
disappear; their songs will die away like the echoes they once awakened,
and the Canadian voyageurs will become a forgotten race, or remembered,
like their associates, the Indians, among the poetical images of past
times, and as themes for local and romantic associations.

An instance of the buoyant temperament and the professional pride of
these people was furnished in the gay and braggart style in which they
arrived at New York to join the enterprise. They were determined to
regale and astonish the people of the "States" with the sight of a
Canadian boat and a Canadian crew. They accordingly fitted up a large
but light bark canoe, such as is used in the fur trade; transported
it in a wagon from the banks of the St. Lawrence to the shores of Lake
Champlain; traversed the lake in it, from end to end; hoisted it again
in a wagon and wheeled it off to Lansingburgh, and there launched it
upon the waters of the Hudson. Down this river they plied their course
merrily on a fine summer's day, making its banks resound for the first