At One Of These Portages Called
The Pin Portage Is A Rapid About Ten Yards In Length With A Descent Of
Ten Or Twelve Feet And Beset With Rocks.
Light canoes sometimes venture
down this fatal gulf to avoid the portage, unappalled by the warning
crosses which overhang the brink, the mournful records of former
failures.
The Hudson's Bay Company's people whom we passed on the 23rd going to the
rock house with their furs were badly provided with food, of which we saw
distressing proofs at every portage behind them. They had stripped the
birch trees of their rind to procure the soft pulpy vessels in contact
with the wood which are sweet but very insufficient to satisfy a craving
appetite.
The lake to the westward of the Pin Portage is called Sandfly Lake; it is
seven miles long and a wide channel connects it with the Serpent Lake,
the extent of which to the southward we could not discern. There is
nothing remarkable in this chain of lakes except their shapes, being
rocky basins filled by the waters of the Missinippi, insulating the massy
eminences and meandering with almost imperceptible current between them.
From the Serpent to the Sandy Lake it is again confined in a narrow space
by the approach of its winding banks, and on the 26th we were some hours
employed in traversing a series of shallow rapids where it was necessary
to lighten the canoes. Having missed the path through the woods we walked
two miles in the water upon sharp stones, from which some of us were
incessantly slipping into deep holes and floundering in vain for footing
at the bottom, a scene highly diverting notwithstanding our fatigue.
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