An instance of the buoyant temperament and the professional pride of these people was furnished in the gay and braggart style in which they arrived at New York to join the enterprise.  They were determined to regale and astonish the people of the “States” with the sight of a Canadian boat and a Canadian crew.  They accordingly fitted up a large but light bark canoe, such as is used in the fur trade; transported it in a wagon from the banks of the St. Lawrence to the shores of Lake Champlain; traversed the lake in it, from end to end; hoisted it again in a wagon and wheeled it off to Lansingburgh, and there launched it upon the waters of the Hudson.  Down this river they plied their course merrily on a fine summer’s day, making its banks resound for the first time with their old French boat songs; passing by the villages with whoop and halloo, so as to make the honest Dutch farmers mistake them for a crew of savages.  In this way they swept, in full song and with regular flourish of the paddle, round New York, in a still summer evening, to the wonder and admiration of its inhabitants, who had never before witnessed on their waters, a nautical apparition of the kind.

Such was the variegated band of adventurers about to embark in the Tonquin on this ardous and doubtful enterprise.  While yet in port and on dry land, in the bustle of preparation and the excitement of novelty, all was sunshine and promise.  The Canadians, especially, who, with their constitutional vivacity, have a considerable dash of the gascon, were buoyant and boastful, and great brag arts as to the future; while all those who had been in the service of the Northwest Company, and engaged in the Indian trade, plumed themselves upon their hardihood and their capacity to endure privations.  If Mr. Astor ventured to hint at the difficulties they might have to encounter, they treated them with scorn.  They were “northwesters;” men seasoned to hardships, who cared for neither wind nor weather.  They could live hard, lie hard, sleep hard, eat dogs!—­in a word they were ready to do and suffer anything for the good of the enterprise.  With all this profession of zeal and devotion, Mr. Astor was not overconfident of the stability and firm faith of these mercurial beings.  He had received information, also, that an armed brig from Halifax, probably at the instigation of the Northwest Company, was hovering on the coast, watching for the Tonquin, with the purpose of impressing the Canadians on board of her, as British subjects, and thus interrupting the voyage.  It was a time of doubt and anxiety, when the relations between the United States and Great Britain were daily assuming a more precarious aspect and verging towards that war which shortly ensued.  As a precautionary measure, therefore, he required that the voyageurs, as they were about to enter into the service of an American association, and to reside within the limits of the United States, should take the oaths of naturalization as American citizens.  To this they readily agreed, and shortly afterward assured him that they had actually done so.  It was not until after they had sailed that he discovered that they had entirely deceived him in the matter.