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The boat was worked by oars, a mast and sail, drag-ropes for towing, and long poles for pushing them through the rapids, while the bow was kept towards the shore by a tow line held by the boat's crew or attached to horses. From ten to twelve days were occupied in the voyage from Montreal or Lachine to Kingston. To convey stores from Lachine to Kingston, during the war, required some tact.
On finding his way blocked by trees, Hagner had sent to procure axes from the engineer train; and in the meantime the regiment at the drag-ropes had been permitted to lie down. Of course they went to sleep. Suddenly awakened by a false alarm that the Mexicans were upon them, they rushed down the hill to get their arms.
Men tugged at drag-ropes and strained at the wheels, it seemed for hours. But the task was at last done horses and men were providentially unhurt. One of the drivers, who had been pinned between his two horses by the fall, had fallen asleep while waiting to be extricated, and lay peacefully oblivious to the pother around him.
They abounded with deep nullahs, or ravines, with abrupt banks of a clayey nature. Our heavy guns we were compelled to get over by means of men and drag-ropes, for the bullocks had no footing, and many of these poor creatures were much hurt in the attempt to perform this labour. After the camp was in sight, we were three hours before we reached it.
The large guns took four hundred men, with double and treble drag-ropes, to pull up; and some of them were, in some of the most abrupt turnings in the ascent, actually hanging by the ropes, in a very dangerous state. One gun broke from its drag-ropes, but it was, fortunately, not far from a turning, which brought it up without any accident.
They hauled their sledges and the boat along with drag-ropes, at which all were tugging except one very tall big man, who seemed to be a chief and walked by himself. Later on in the same season, so the Eskimos said, they had found the bodies of a lot of men lying on the ice, and had seen some graves and five dead bodies on an island at the mouth of a river. Some of the bodies were lying in tents.
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