superstitious. He saw sermons in stones, books in the running brooks,
and the supernatural in everything. Simple, hardy, occasionally bloody,
he was ever on the watch for signs and wonders, and a phase of nature
influenced him after the manner of a being with a temperament. Often, as
some of the woodsmen and river-men had seen this strange effect, they now
made the sacred gesture as they ran on. The pure moisture lay like a
fine exudation on their brown skins, glistened on their black hair, and
hung from their beards, giving them a mysterious look. The colours of
their canoes and clothes were softened by the dim air and long use, and
there seemed to accompany each boat and each person an atmosphere within
this other haze, a spiritual kind of exhalation; so that one might have
thought them, with the crucifixes on their breasts, and that unworldly,
distinguished look which comes to those who live much with nature, as
sons of men going upon such mission as did they who went into the far
land with Arthur.

But the silence could not be maintained for long. The first flush of the
impression gone, these half-barbarians, with the simple hearts of
children, must rise from the almost melancholy, somewhat religious mood,
into which they had been cast. As Iberville, with Sainte-Helene and
Perrot, sat watching the canoes that followed, with voyageurs erect in
bow and stern, a voice in the next canoe, with a half-chanting
modulation, began a song of the wild-life. Voice after voice slowly took
it up, until it ran along the whole procession. A verse was sung, then a
chorus altogether, then a refrain of one verse which was sung by each
boat in succession to the last. As the refrain of this was sung by the
last boat it seemed to come out of the great haze behind. Verses of the
old song are still preserved:

"Qui vive!