Familiar Songs - Their Authors & Histories

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	CANADIAN BOAT SONG.	205
	ciation gives to every little memorial of scenes or feelings that are past, the melody may, perhaps, be thought common or trifling; but I remember when we have entered at sunset, upon one of those beautiful lakes into which the St. Lawrence so grandly and unexpectedly opens, I have heard this simple air with a pleasure which the finest compositions of the first masters have never given me; and now there is not a note of it which does not recall to my memory the dip of our oars in the St. Lawrence, the flight of our boat down the rapids, and all these new and fanciful impressions to which my heart was alive during the whole of this very interesting voyage. The stanzas are supposed to be sung by those voyageurs who go the Grande Portage by the Utawas river. Sir Alexander Mackenzie, in his account of the Fur Trade, says: ' At the rapid of St. Ann, they are obliged to take out a part, if not the whole, of their lading. It is from this spot the Canadians consider they take their departure, as it possesses the last church on the island, which is dedicated to the tutelar saint of voyagers.'"