With this object in view we kept a course nearly due north, passing
through four good-sized lakes, until, one afternoon, at the end of a
short portage, we reached a narrow, shallow lake lying in an easterly
and westerly direction, whose water was very clear and of a bottle-
green color, in marked contrast to that of the preceding lakes, which
had been of a darker shade.

This peculiarity of the water led me to look carefully for a current
when our canoe was launched, and I believed I noticed one. Then I
fancied I heard a rapid to the westward. Easton said there was no
current and he could not hear a rapid, and to satisfy myself, we
paddled toward the sound. We had not gone far when the current became
quite perceptible, and just above could be seen the waters of a brook
that fed the lake, pouring down through the rocks. We were on the
George River at last! Our feelings can be imagined when the full
realization of our good fortune came to us, and we turned our canoe to
float down on the current of the little stream that was to grow into a
mighty river as it carried us on its turbulent bosom toward Ungava
Bay.

The course of the stream here was almost due east. The surrounding
country continued low and swampy. Tamarack was the chief timber and
much of it was straight and fine, with some trees fully twelve inches
in diameter at the butt, and fifty feet in height.

A rocky, shallow place in the river that we had to portage brought us
into an expansion of considerable size, and here we pitched our first
camp on the George River. This was an event that Hubbard had planned
and pictured through the weary weeks of hardship on the Susan Valley
trail and the long portages across the ranges in his expedition of