The Young Voyageurs | Page 5

holster, and the shining butt of a pistol could be seen protruding out; a hunting-knife of the kind denominated "bowie" hanging over the left hip, completed his "arms and accoutrements."
The second of the youths was dressed, as already stated, in a somewhat similar manner, though his accoutrements were not of so warlike a character. Like the other, he had a powder-horn and pouch, but instead of knife and pistol, a canvass bag or haversack hung from his shoulder; and had you looked into it, you would have seen that it was half filled with shells, pieces of rock, and rare plants, gathered during the day-- the diurnal storehouse of the geologist, the palaeontologist, and botanist--to be emptied for study and examination by the night camp-fire. Instead of the 'coon-skin cap he wore a white felt hat with broad leaf; and for leggings and mocassins he had trousers of blue cottonade and laced buskins of tanned leather.
The youngest of the three was dressed and accoutred much like the eldest, except that his cap was of blue cloth--somewhat after the fashion of the military forage cap. All three wore shirts of coloured cotton, the best for journeying in these uninhabited regions, where soap is scarce, and a laundress not to be had at any price.
Though very unlike one another, these three youths were brothers. I knew them well. I had seen them before--about two years before--and though each had grown several inches taller since that time, I had no difficulty in recognising them. Even though they were now two thousand miles from where I had formerly encountered them, I could not be mistaken as to their identity. Beyond a doubt they were the same brave young adventurers whom I had met in the swamps of Louisiana, and whose exploits I had witnessed upon the prairies of Texas. They were the "Boy Hunters,"--Basil, Lucien, Francois! I was right glad to renew acquaintance with them. Boy reader, do you share my joy?
But whither go they now? They are full two thousand miles from their home in Louisiana. The Red River upon which their canoe floats is not that Red River, whose blood-like waters sweep through the swamps of the hot South--the home of the alligator and the gar. No, it is a stream of a far different character, though also one of great magnitude. Upon the banks of the former ripens the rice-plant, and the sugar-cane waves its golden tassels high in the air. There, too, flourishes the giant reed (Arundo gigantea), the fan-palm (Chamaerops), and the broad-leafed magnolia, with its huge snow-white flowers. There the aspect is Southern, and the heat tropical for most part of the year.
All this is reversed on the Red River of the North. It is true that on its banks sugar is also produced; but it is no longer from a plant but a lordly tree--the great sugar-maple (Acer saccharinum). There is rice too,--vast fields of rice upon its marshy borders; but it is not the pearly grain of the South. It is the wild rice, "the water oats" (Zizania aquatica), the food of millions of winged creatures, and thousands of human beings as well. Here for three-fourths of the year the sun is feeble, and the aspect that of winter. For months the cold waters are bound up in an icy embrace. The earth is covered with thick snow, over which rise the needle-leafed coniferae--the pines, the cedars, the spruce, and the hemlock. Very unlike each other are the countries watered by the two streams, the Red River of the South and its namesake of the North.
But whither go our Boy Hunters in their birch-bark canoe? The river upon which they are voyaging runs due northward into the great Lake Winnipeg. They are floating with its current, and consequently increasing the distance from their home. Whither go they?
The answer leads us to some sad reflections. Our joy on again beholding them is to be mingled with grief. When we last saw them they had a father, but no mother. Now they have neither one nor the other. The old Colonel, their father--the French emigre, the hunter-naturalist--is dead. He who had taught them all they knew, who had taught them "to ride, to swim, to dive deep rivers, to fling the lasso, to climb tall trees, and scale steep cliffs, to bring down birds upon the wing or beasts upon the run, with the arrow and the unerring rifle; who had trained them to sleep in the open air, in the dark forest, on the unsheltered prairie, along the white snow-wreath-- anywhere--with but a blanket or a buffalo-robe for their bed; who had taught them to live on the simplest food, and had imparted to one of them a knowledge of science, of botany in particular, that enabled