6 Mackenzie’s Voyages

France in the rough. His successors discovered and used
the short portages between Lake Erie and the Wabash;
Lake Michigan and the Illinois and Grand Rivers; and the
head of Lake Superior and the St. Croix. Thus the head-
waters of the Mississippi were reached by a number of
convenient divides. The most important one, pertinent to
the subject, is the route over Grande Portage between Lake
Superior and Rainy Lake leading direct to Lake Winnipeg
and the North-West.

All these natural highways had been carved out in glacial
times by the advance of the Keewatin and Labrador ice-
sheets. They were intimately known to the Indians in the
hoary past, and Indian guides conducted the first French
explorers, missionaries, and fur-traders westward. To-day
these ancient highways are the rail, canal, and steamer routes
over which a copious trafic flows.

To lure on the early adventurers there was ever a promise
of a richer harvest of furs in the virgin territory beyond
the lakes. .

Much of the romance and a great deal of the adventure
incident to life in the new world centres about the fur-trade.
The impoverished French nobles found this a remarkably
easy way to mend their fortunes. The energetic spirits of
the community quickly realised that greater profits could
be made by going direct to the source of supplies. Hence
there arose that class of semi-savage adventurers, the coureurs
du bois, young men of spirit, who gloried in the discovery
that they could range the woods and waterways with the
unerring facility of the redman, and at the same time gather
canoe loads of valuable furs.

These lively voyageurs and their equally spirited superiors
spread French influence and a liking for the French among
the Indians of the St. Lawrence valley, around the Great