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!
Who is it cries in the dawn
Cries when the stars go down?
Who is it comes through the mist
The mist that is fine like lawn,
The mist like an angel's gown?
Who is it comes in the dawn?
Qui vive! Qui vive! in the dawn.
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