Our tent was on the border of a coppice of young trees.  It was pleasant to be awakened by a convocation of birds at sunrise, and to watch the shadows of the leaves dance out upon our translucent roof of canvas.

All the birds in the bush are early, but there are so many of them that it is difficult to believe that every one can be rewarded with a worm.  Here in Canada those little people of the air who appear as transient guests of spring and autumn in the Middle States, are in their summer home and breeding-place.  Warblers, named for the magnolia and the myrtle, chestnut-sided, bay-breasted, blue-backed, and black-throated, flutter and creep along the branches with simple lisping music.  Kinglets, ruby-crowned and golden-crowned, tiny, brilliant sparks of life, twitter among the trees, breaking occasionally into clearer, sweeter songs.  Companies of redpolls and crossbills pass chirping through the thickets, busily seeking their food.  The fearless, familiar chickadee repeats his name merrily, while he leads his family to explore every nook and cranny of the wood.  Cedar wax-wings, sociable wanderers, arrive in numerous flocks.  The Canadians call them “recollets,” because they wear a brown crest of the same colour as the hoods of the monks who came with the first settlers to New France.  They are a songless tribe, although their quick, reiterated call as they take to flight has given them the name of chatterers.  The beautiful tree-sparrows and the pine-siskins are more melodious, and the slate-coloured juncos, flitting about the camp, are as garrulous as chippy-birds.  All these varied notes come and go through the tangle of morning dreams.  And now the noisy blue-jay is calling “Thief—­thief—­thief!” in the distance, and a pair of great pileated woodpeckers with crimson crests are laughing loudly in the swamp over some family joke.  But listen! what is that harsh creaking note?  It is the cry of the Northern shrike, of whom tradition says that he catches little birds and impales them on sharp thorns.  At the sound of his voice the concert closes suddenly and the singers vanish into thin air.  The hour of music is over; the commonplace of day has begun.  And there is my lady Greygown, already up and dressed, standing by the breakfast-table and laughing at my belated appearance.

But the birds were not our only musicians at Kenogami.  French Canada is one of the ancestral homes of song.  Here you can still listen to those quaint ballads which were sung centuries ago in Normandie and Provence.  “A la Claire Fontaine,” “Dans Paris y a-t-une Brune plus Belle que le Jour,” “Sur le Pont d’Avignon,” “En Roulant ma Boule,” “La Poulette Grise,” and a hundred other folk-songs linger among the peasants and voyageurs of these northern woods.  You may hear

     “Malbrouck s’en va-t-en guerre—­
     Mironton, mironton, mirontaine,”

and

     “Isabeau s’y promene
     Le long de son jardin,”