Turn towards the river. See a long pirogue, or more ample Mackinaw boat - perhaps a little fleet of them in a single line, manned by voyajeeurs, or courreurs de bois, and loaded with packs of peltries. The oarsmen have fitted out at Mackinaw, to appear in style at Detroit ... Each garcon has a sash around his waist, and pulls a red oar. They keep perfect time - and it is joyous quick time - with the notes of a French song which was chanted in France a century ago.
No music could be more lively or inspiring. It comes over the water - is accompanied by the splash of oars. It is roared out with the utmost spirit, too, by that most glorious of all instruments, the human voice... It greets the steeples of St. Ann! The children run out of the houses, down to the river shore, to hear it; the maiden turns pale, and blushes, and hurries to the door; the old man hobbles out and waves his hat...
Ah! that was a happy time for everybody. Our little community was not yet divided on the question of Bibles in schools, or wine on the side-boards. Slavery was little talked of, and as for disunion - the mere word was considered, by the veriest Kenuck, as a profanation of human language.
But as settlers from New England began to thicken among us - Bostonians they were indiscriminately denominated - it gradually came to light that our lively little community were scarce a grain better than the wicked, nay than the very heathen; witness the fiddling and dancing on Sunday evenings [[and pleasant Sunday evenings they were deemed by us, in our dreadful ignorance), wherever there was any little neighborhood of French people - on the great wide porch, or beneath the trees on the grass; or, if in the house, with the doors and windows thrown wide open.
And there were the prettiest and most mischievous-eyed French girls, dancing away for dear life with the good-looking, frank-mannered voyajeurs, or courreurs de bois, in their red, yellow, or green sashes, long black hair, and blue calico shirts. Such abominations attracted the "growing attention" of the strict sober-sides from the land of Jonathan Edwards, as he passed these dens of Apollyon, on his way to the place where prayer was wont to be made.
Then was there not racing to church the year round, and racing home again? And were there not regular trotting matches on the afternoons of the great days of the church, which brought the people in from the country, up and down the river?
Especially, was there ever anything like it in the winter season, when the wicked river would even wink at these atrocities by freezing over, so that nothing was seen on Sunday afternoons but carioles turned up in the front, in a curl like a skate, gliding, or rather flying, over the ice, two and two?
The little Canadian ponies held their tails up in the air like banners, and their noses protruding into the clouds, or snorting between their legs - they trotting like made, while the garcons whooped like Indians, shouting, whey! avance! arriez! ever and anon stealing a flashing kiss from the bright demoiselles at their sides.
Then on Easter morning, was not the church-yard of St. Ann's fairly riotous with boys cracking painted eggs? Nay, in the same precincts, were not idolatries frequently committed?
Was not the Host carried in procession by chanting Jesuits and nuns, to a high mound called Mount Calvary, where there was a huge cross , and beneath which lay the tomb of our Savior? Doubt not that these abominations smelt in the nostrils of the sons of the Puritans.
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