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Updated: June 19, 2025
It seemed to us that all our lives we had been going on and on through rushing water, or with packs over rocky portages, and the Post we were aiming to reach appeared no nearer to us than it did the day we left Northwest River long, long ago. We seldom spoke. Sometimes in a whole day not a dozen words would be exchanged.
Ten portages have to be faced and overcome as the brigade ascends the rapid Jack Tent River, covering a stretch of seventy miles. The party now find themselves on the surface of Knee Lake, a considerable sheet of water, but a comparative rest after the trials of Jack Tent River. The lake is fifty-six miles long and at times widens to ten miles across. But there is trouble just ahead.
The whole French force of soldiers, free traders, and voyageurs were needed at Montreal and Quebec. Not a Frenchman seems to have remained behind, and for a number of years the way to the West was blocked up. The canoes went to decay, the portages grew up with weeds and underwood, and the Western search for furs from Montreal was suspended. No man knew the Indian better than Andrew McDermott.
The following day, accompanied by a single Massett Indian, I ascended the river for several miles, by means of two very small canoes, making several portages around log jambs over rapids and shallow places. About three miles up, two old Indians and two naked boys, tending a salmon trap, were roasting splendid salmon trout, which they shared with us.
On the tenth of May, they made two such portages, and soon after, reaching a third fall, again lifted their canoe from the water. They toiled through the naked forest, among the wet, black trees, over tangled roots, green, spongy mosses, mouldering leaves, and rotten, prostrate trunks, while the cataract foamed amidst the rocks hard by.
Because of rapids and the fierceness of the spring floods, portages were many, and progress slow during the whole of that day. They had made twenty miles when the sun began sinking in the west, and they struck camp. After their supper of meat the Cree rolled himself in his blanket and slept. But for long hours Roscoe sat beside their fire.
You will have to make some portages, and you will have a good appetite for supper when you reach the old Lindsley house, ten miles from Gager's, but its present owner is hospitable. A queer old chap was Lindsley the last time I saw him. I remember how he took me all over his claim and showed me the beauties of Lindsleyville, as he called it.
On the morning of the 18th the country was clothed in the livery of winter, a heavy fall of snow having taken place during the night. We embarked at the usual hour and in the course of the day crossed the Point of Rocks and Brassa Portages and dragged the boats through several minor rapids. In this tedious way we only made good about nine miles.
They argued: The summer in these high latitudes is short; we must make the most of it. Every day tells, and there must be no lagging by the way. The result was, that the men were worked to the last degree of endurance. Many failed at the oar, while others dropped under the heavy loads on the difficult portages. "Fill up the ranks quickly, and push on," was the order.
The number and length of those PORTAGES, over which the roads are bad, and the travelling slow, render the way between the towns of Montreal and Kingston, somewhat tedious. Our course lay over a wide, uninclosed tract of country at a little distance from the river-side, whence the bright warning lights on the dangerous parts of the St. Lawrence shone vividly.
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