Barkskins Read Online Free

Villages grew up around the kettles. All very well, but someone had to carry those monstrous vessels to them, someone had to toil and haul them up dangerous portage routes.” He pointed silently at his breast. “This was below my station in life.” And he smote his tree.
    â€œThe fur trade moved north and west,” he said to the tree as he told of his disenchantment. “The portages. Six, eight miles of rocks with two fur packs the weight of a cow, then back to the canoe and more packs or one of the cursed kettles. Finally, the canoe. You would not believe the enormous loads some of those men carried. One is said to have carried five hundredweight each trip from early morning until darkness.” Carrying one of the detested kettles, said Trépagny, his right knee gave way. The injury plagued him still.
    â€œHowever! The fur company, with the rights the King assigned them, made me a seigneur and charged me to gather habitants and populate New France. This is the beginning of a great new city in the wilderness.”
    René asked a question that had bothered him since the first trek through the woods.
    â€œWhy do we cut the forest when there are so many fine clearings? Why wouldn’t a man build his house in a clearing, one of those meadows that we passed when we walked here? Would it not be easier?”
    But Monsieur Trépagny was scandalized. “Easier? Yes, easier, but we are here to clear the forest, to subdue this evil wilderness.” He was silent for a minute, thinking, then started in again. “Moreover, here in New France there is a special way of apportioning property. Strips of land that run from a river to the forest give each settler fertile farm soil, high ground safe from floods, and forest trees for timber, fuel and—mushrooms! It is an equitable arrangement not possible with clearings taken up willy-nilly— bon gré mal gré. ”
    René hoped this was the end of the lecture but the man went on. “Men must change this land in order to live in it. In olden times men lived like beasts. In those ancient days men had claws and long teeth, nor could they speak but only growled.” He made a sound to show how they growled.
    René, chopping trees, felt not the act but the pure motion, the raised ax, the gathering tension in arms and shoulders, buttocks and thighs, the hips pivoting, knees loose and flexed, and then the swing downward as abstract as the shadow of a stone, a kind of forest dance. He had bound a rock to the poll with babiche to counterbalance the heavy bit. It increased the accuracy of each stroke.
    Monsieur Trépagny launched into a droning sermon on the necessity, the duty of removing the trees, of opening land not just for oneself but for posterity, for what this place would become. “Someday,” Monsieur Trépagny said, pointing into the gloom, “someday men will grow cabbages here. To be a man is to clear the forest. I don’t see the trees,” he said. “I see the cabbages. I see the vineyards.”
    Monsieur Trépagny said his uncle Jean Trépagny, dit Chamailleur for his disputatious nature—Chama for short—would take Duquet’s place. He was old but strong, stronger than Duquet. He would arrive soon. Monsieur Trépagny’s brothers would also come. Eventually. And he said the time for felling trees was now over. The bébites were at their worst, the wet heat dangerous, the trees too full of sap. Indeed, the hellish swarms of biting insects were with them day and night.
    â€œWinter. Winter is the correct time to cut the forest. Today is the time for removing stumps and burning.” It was also the time, he added, for René to begin to fulfill his other duties.
    â€œFor three days a week your labor is mine. As part of your work,” said Monsieur Trépagny, “you are to supply my table with fish.” The more immediate work involved preparing the gardens for Mari.