Seeking Pond’s Outlet 35,

After a satisfactory day the second camp was made on the
eastern bank at Dog River, just above the first rapid several
miles across from the present location of Fitzgerald. From
this point the river falls 125 feet in sixteen miles ina series
of dangerous chutes, spreading out to a width of two miles
as it tumbles over a broken gneissic spur, thrust across from
the Laurentian region in the east. Without good guides a
safe descent is almost impossible. Many rocky islands break
up the river into intricate channels. Log-jams and drift-piles
are numerous and troublesome. But a descent by canoe or
boat can be made on the east side by making five or six
portages totalling nearly 4000 paces.

To negotiate the series of six large and several minor
rapids required all the skill and endurance of every member
of the party. The cargo of ninety-pound “‘pieces” was
unloaded and reloaded half a dozen times and carried over
portages which varied in length from 300 to 1200 paces.
Sometimes it was only necessary to lighten the canoes, but
over the carrying-places, the canoes, the heaviest of which
weighed over three hundred pounds, were shouldered by
the bowman and the steersman whose special duty it was
to transport their craft in this fashion. ‘‘No men in the world
are more severely worked than these voyageurs,” says a
writer of the time, “but it is not with impunity that they
so exert themselves. “They lose much flesh in the performance
of such duties, though the quantity of food they consume is
incredible. ‘They smoke almost incessantly, and sing peculiar
songs which are the same their grandfathers and their great-
grandfathers sang before them.” }

“So inured are they to this kind of labour that I have
known some of them set off with two packages of ninety
pounds each and return with two others of the same weight

* Landmann, Adventures and Recollections. Two vols. London, 1852.