on the eastern side of the river. It was fully six feet in width and
had been used for the passage of larger boats than canoes. The moss
was still unrenewed where the tramp of many moccasins had worn it off.
This was the trail made by John McLean's brigades nearly three-
quarters of a century before, for in their journeys to Indian House
Lake they had used rowboats and not canoes for the transportation of
supplies.

The day we passed over this portage was a most miserable one. We were
soaked from morning till night with mingled snow and rain, and numb
with the cold, but when we made our night camp, below the junction of
the rivers, one or two ax cuttings were found, and I knew that now our
troubles were nearly at an end and we were not far from men. The next
afternoon (Monday, October sixteenth) we stopped two or three miles
below a rapid to boil our kettle, and before our tea was made the
canoe was high and dry on the rocks. We had reached tide water at
last! How we hurried through that luncheon, and with what light
hearts we launched the canoe again, and how we peered into every bay
for the Post buildings that we knew were now close at hand can be
imagined. These bays were being left wide stretches of mud and rocks
by the receding water, which has a tide fall here of nearly forty
feet. At last, as we rounded a rocky point, we saw the Post. The
group of little white buildings nestling deep in a cove, a feathery
curl of smoke rising peacefully from the agent's house, an Eskimo
_tupek_ (tent), boats standing high on the mud flat below, and the
howl of a husky dog in the distance, formed a picture of comfort that
I shall long remember.