spray. Another
rounded the bend, another double row of paddles flashed in the
sunlight, another crew, broke into a tumult of rapid exertion as they
raced the last quarter mile of the long journey. A third burst into
view, a fourth, a fifth. The silent river was alive with motion,
glittering with color. The canoes swept onward, like race-horses
straining against the rider. Now the spectators could make out plainly
the boatmen. It could be seen that they had decked themselves out for
the occasion. Their heads were bound with bright-colored fillets,
their necks with gay scarves. The paddles were adorned with gaudy
woollen streamers. New leggings, of holiday pattern, were
intermittently visible on the bowsmen and steersmen as they half rose
to give added force to their efforts.

At first the men sang their canoe songs, but as the swift rush of the
birch-barks brought them almost to their journey's end, they burst
into wild shrieks and whoops of delight.

All at once they were close to hand. The steersman rose to throw his
entire weight on the paddle. The canoe swung abruptly for the shore.
Those in it did not relax their exertions, but continued their
vigorous strokes until within a few yards of apparent destruction.

"Hola! hola!" they cried, thrusting their paddles straight down into
the water with a strong backward twist. The stout wood bent and
cracked. The canoe stopped short and the _voyageurs_ leaped ashore to
be swallowed up in the crowd that swarmed down upon them.

The races were about equally divided, and each acted after its
instincts--the Indian greeting his people quietly, and stalking away
to the privacy of his wigwam; the more volatile white catching his
wife or his sweetheart or his child to his arms. A swarm of Indian
women and half-grown children set about unloading the canoes.

Virginia's eyes ran over the crews of the various craft. She
recognized them all, of course, to the last Indian packer, for in so
small a community the personality and doings of even the humblest
members are well known to everyone. Long since she had identified the
_brigade_. It was of the Missinaibie, the great river whose
head-waters rise a scant hundred feet from those that flow as many
miles south into Lake Superior. It drains a wild and rugged country
whose forests cling to bowlder hills, whose streams issue from
deep-riven gorges, where for many years the big gray wolves had
gathered in unusual abundance. She knew by h