Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 19, 2025
One man, who lost the path, got in a most intricate and perilous position. With a large package on his back, he got so wedged amid the rocks that he could move neither forward nor backward, nor yet unload himself. On this carrying-place, which was two miles long, our shoes became shattered. For several days after this the advance was by a succession of rapids and portages.
Provisions high up the river are exorbitant of course, as they can only be brought up in canoes requiring long "portages."
The rest of the party set off afterwards, and kept along the river until ten, when we branched off by portages into the Embarras River, the usual channel of communication in canoes with the lake. It is a narrow and serpentine stream, confined between alluvial banks which support pines, poplars, and willows. We had not advanced far before we overtook the two men despatched by us this morning.
It was after four o'clock before we were ready to go on, and we started once more with a fairly tight boat, dry inside. Then we had a wild ride. The descent was steady. For eight miles there was a continuous rapid, accentuated by eight heavy falls. The boats sped along at high speed, but the way being clear we did not often stop, passing two places where the former expedition made portages.
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.
So full of portent and color it is that I wonder no one has woven its incidents, slight as they are, into French literature or into that of America. They filled twenty-three canoes in a procession that was halted by shipwreck, by heat, by lack of rain and by too much rain, by difficult portages, and damage to the canoes.
Of course they obtained a new "outfit" at the Fort; but they took with them only such articles as were absolutely necessary, as they had many portages to make before they could reach the waters of the Mackenzie River.
Having crossed two portages at the different extremities of the Island Lake, we ran under sail through two extensive sheets of water, called the Heron and Pelican Lakes; the former of which is fifteen miles in length, and the latter five; but its extent to the southward has not been explored. An intricate channel, with four small portages, conducted us to the Woody Lake.
Once we came to a place where it dropped over massive bed rock in a series of falls, some of which were thirty or more feet in height. Few portages, however, were necessary.
The two officers were lean and gaunt from hard work and insufficient nourishment, but West was still sleek and well padded with flesh. He had not missed a meal, and during the past weeks he had been a passenger. All the hard work, the packing at portages, the making of camp, the long, wearing days of hunting, had fallen upon the two whose prisoner he was.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking