Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 23, 2025
"Quite a bit of loot, isn't it?" he said, a little red in the face from the effort of portaging so pretentious a load. That word "loot" stuck in my craw. It was a painful reminder of something that I'd been trying very hard to forget. "Did it come with the car?" I demanded. "Yes, it came with the car," he was compelled to acknowledge.
Ridges and hills extended to the mountains on the north. Great boulders were piled in confusion behind us and in front of us. Portaging over them had been most difficult and dangerous. A misstep might have meant a broken leg, and as it was, the skin had been pretty nearly all knocked off of our shins from the instep to the knee.
Though we had some food in stock, there was to be no cessation in our effort to get fish; our plan was for Hubbard to try his rod at the foot of every rapid while George and I did the portaging. Before midday Hubbard had forty trout, one of them sixteen inches long the biggest we had caught yet.
That evening he camped at the foot of a fall, which he had heard of, but never before seen, and spent the whole of the next day in portaging his belongings to navigable water, and on the following evening well beyond the rocky ramparts, where the river ran so swiftly, made his camp, happily conscious that now the river presented no barrier for two hundred miles.
After a hearty breakfast of fish taken from the gill-net that had been set overnight below the rapid the work of portaging round the rapids was begun and by about ten o'clock was finished. Noon overtook us near the mouth of Caribou River, up which we were to ascend on the first half of our journey to Oo-koo-hoo's hunting grounds.
After 1 1/2 mile camped. Tuesday, July 28th. Temp. 6 A.M. 46 degrees. Three miles. Cool, cloudy, spell of sunshine now and then. Cold, nasty wading all A.M. to make a mile. Fine portaging in P.M., just cool enough, no flies. Pretty nearly blue in A.M. over lack of progress. Two miles in P.M. brightened things up. By fire between logs we dry, clothes now in evening. All tired out. Low new moon.
The Winnipeg River, in its course of 160 miles from the Lake of the Woods to Lake Winnipeg, makes a descent of 360 feet, occasioning falls, rapids, chutes, and cataracts, which make its navigation difficult. The portaging, or carrying power of the Indians, says Major Butler, is remarkable; one man often carrying two hundred-weight for several miles.
From the head of the lake another mile of good portaging brought us at last to waters flowing to Seal Lake, and we were again in the canoes to taste for a little the pleasures of going with the tide. For long we had been going against it and such a tide!
As he followed Sam out on the curving cheek of the rock his foot slid, he lost his equilibrium, was on the edge of falling, overbalanced by the top-heavy pack he was carrying. Luckily Sam himself was portaging the canoe. Dick, with marvellous quickness, ducked loose from the tump-line. The pack bounded down the slant, fell with a splash, and was whirled away.
Notwithstanding the delay caused by drying the mails, as well as distributing them to the several brigades which we overhauled and passed, we ran a distance of forty miles and made no less than fifteen portages. The carrying or portaging power of the Indian is very remarkable. A young boy will trot away under a load which would stagger a strong European unaccustomed to such labour.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking