tracking or poling the canoes had been forced against the quick water.
Early one forenoon, however, Haukemah lifted carefully the bow of his
canoe and slid it up the bank.




CHAPTER SEVEN


The portage struck promptly to the right through a tall, leafy woods,
swam neck-high in the foliage of small growth, mounted a steep hill, and
meandered over a bowlder-strewn, moss-grown plateau, to dip again, a
quarter of a mile away, to the banks of the river. But you must not
imagine one of your easy portages of Maine or lower Canada. This trail
was faint and dim,--here an excoriation on the surface of a fallen and
half-rotted tree, there a withered limb hanging, again a mere _sense_ in
the forest's growth that others had passed that way. Only an expert
could have followed it.

The canoe loads were dumped out on the beach. One after another, even to
the little children, the people shouldered their packs. The long sash
was knotted into a loop, which was passed around the pack and the
bearer's forehead. Some of the stronger men carried thus upward of two
hundred pounds.

Unlike a party of white men, the Indians put no system into their work.
They rested when they pleased, chatted, shouted, squatted on their heels
conversing. Yet somehow the task was accomplished, and quickly. To one
on an elevation dominating the scene it would have been most