That lends to the voice of the North-wind
The tones of a far-off bell?"

The Indian boatmen _said_ nothing, but thought deep, like the Irishman's
parrot.

"The voyageur smiles as he listens
To the sound that grows apace;
Well he knows the vesper ringing
Of the bells of St. Boniface."

Once the young Scot had reached his flock, he wrote back to a friend in
the States telling how he came across on the edge of the wilderness

"The bells of the Roman Mission,
That call from their turrets twain
To the boatmen on the river,
To the hunter on the plain."

That friend was a fellow-townsman of the "Quaker Poet." The story was
told to Whittier and inspired the lines of _The Red River Voyageur_.




CHAPTER II

WINNIPEG TO ATHABASCA LANDING