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Updated: May 23, 2025
The real work of the trip was now to begin, the hard portaging, the trail finding and trail making, and we were to break the seal of a land that had, through the ages, held its secret from all the world, excepting the red man.
Without pausing, except for a brief half hour at noon, and another later in the day for eating, they pressed the trail, running what rapids they could and portaging the others, until in the early evening they saw, far away, a dirty blur on the skyline. "Hurrah!" yelled Fielding. "Good old firebus, waiting for us." "Somebody run ahead and hold her," said Duff.
A ptarmigan whirred up, from the corner of my tent and I awoke to find the sun shining and everything outside sparkling with frost. The men had already begun portaging, for below camp the rapids were too heavy to take the outfit down; but when breakfast was over and the last load had been taken forward over the half-mile portage, the canoes were run down the river.
On the next day, however, the waters 'collected' and began running in leaps and throwing back spume. Some one shouted 'Breakers! head ashore! and the galloping rafts bumped on the bank of the river. The banks here were steep for portaging; and the Scarborough boys, brought up on the lake-front, east of Toronto, decided, come what might, to run the rapids.
They camped every night at sunset, and rose each morning at one. Their tireless Canadian and Iroquois voyageurs worked eighteen hours a day, paddling swiftly through smooth water, wading through shallows, or towing the canoes through the lesser rapids, or portaging once to a dozen times a day round the more difficult ones.
Pint berries raw for supper. Otherwise, venison and broth, thickened with three spoonfuls of flour, each meal. Sunday, September 6th. Temp. 5 A.M. 38 degrees. First snow came, mixed with nasty cold rain. Nasty, raw, west wind. Worked in it most of day, portaging 2 1/2 miles N.W. Tried carrying all stuff at one trip. Grub low. Big water ahead. Believe this big water will lead to Michikamau.
We only ran in a clear course for ten minutes all told, and spent eight hours in portaging the loads past rapids down which the canoes were run; the balsa was almost swamped. This day we caught twenty-eight big fish, mostly piranhas, and everybody had all he could eat for dinner, and for breakfast the following morning.
We thought of it many times as we carefully worked our boats along the shore. Between the delays of rain, with stops for picture making, portaging our material, and "lining" our boats, we spent almost three days in getting past the rapids called Upper and Lower Disaster Falls, with their combined fall of 50 feet in little more than half a mile.
Many of the men of little knowledge talk glibly of portaging as if it were simple and easy. A portage over rough and unknown ground is always a work of difficulty and of some risk to the canoe; and in the untrodden, or even in the unfrequented, wilderness risk to the canoe is a serious matter.
It looked as if the city man had engaged a gang of track-layers, who are used to pioneering and sometimes carry surveyors' stores through the wilds. "Well," he said, "we'll follow their trail." The party had obviously left the water for a time, because their track led away from the creek in the valley and the bush was too thick to permit the portaging of canoes.
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