The third day of these wanderings, as we were carrying the canoe
upon a rocky portage, she fell, and was entirely bilged. The
portage was between two lakes, both pretty extensive; the track,
such as it was, opened at both ends upon the water, and on both
hands was enclosed by the unbroken woods; and the sides of the
lakes were quite impassable with bog: so that we beheld ourselves
not only condemned to go without our boat and the greater part of
our provisions, but to plunge at once into impenetrable thickets
and to desert what little guidance we still had - the course of the
river. Each stuck his pistols in his belt, shouldered an axe, made
a pack of his treasure and as much food as he could stagger under;
and deserting the rest of our possessions, even to our swords,
which would have much embarrassed us among the woods, we set forth
on this deplorable adventure. The labours of Hercules, so finely
described by Homer, were a trifle to what we now underwent. Some
parts of the forest were perfectly dense down to the ground, so
that we must cut our way like mites in a cheese. In some the
bottom was full of deep swamp, and the whole wood entirely rotten.
I have leaped on a great fallen log and sunk to the knees in
touchwood; I have sought to stay myself, in falling, against what
looked to be a solid trunk, and the whole thing has whiffed away at
my touch like a sheet of paper. Stumbling, falling, bogging to the
knees, hewing our way, our eyes almost put out with twigs and
branches, our clothes plucked from our bodies, we laboured all day,
and it is doubtful if we made two miles. What was worse, as we
could rarely get a view of the country, and were perpetually
justled from our path by obstacles, it was impossible even to have
a guess in what direction we were moving.

A little before sundown, in an open place with a stream, and set