The
crystalline waters of Lake Superior on their way through the channel of
this river to Lake Huron, here rush, and foam, and roar, for about three
quarters of a mile, over rocks and large stones.
Close to the rapids, with birchen-canoes moored in little inlets, is a
village of the Indians, consisting of log-cabins and round wigwams, on a
shrubby level, reserved to them by the government. The morning after our
arrival, we went through this village in search of a canoe and a couple of
Indians, to make the descent of the rapids, which is one of the first
things that a visitor to the Sault must think of. In the first wigwam that
we entered were three men and two women as drunk as men and women could
well be. The squaws were speechless and motionless, too far gone, as it
seemed, to raise either hand or foot; the men though apparently unable to
rise were noisy, and one of them, who called himself a half-breed and
spoke a few words of English, seemed disposed to quarrel. Before the next
door was a woman busy in washing, who spoke a little English. "The old
man out there," she said, in answer to our questions, "can paddle canoe,
but he is very drunk, he can not do it to-day."
"Is there nobody else," we asked, "who will take us down the falls?"
"I don't know; the Indians all drunk to-day."
"Why is that? why are they all drunk to-day?"
"Oh, the whisky," answered the woman, giving us to understand, that when
an Indian could get whisky, he got drunk as a matter of course.
By this time the man had come up, and after addressing us with the
customary "_bon jour_" manifested a curiosity to know the nature of our
errand. The woman explained it to him in English.
"Oh, messieurs, je vous servirai," said he, for he spoke Canadian French;
"I go, I go."
We told him that we doubted whether he was quite sober enough.
"Oh, messieurs, je suis parfaitement capable - first rate, first rate."
We shook him off as soon as we could, but not till after he had time to
propose that we should wait till the next day, and to utter the maxim,
"Whisky, good - too much whisky, no good."
In a log-cabin, which some half-breeds were engaged in building, we found
two men who were easily persuaded to leave their work and pilot us over
the rapids. They took one of the canoes which lay in a little inlet close
at hand, and entering it, pushed it with their long poles up the stream in
the edge of the rapids.
