to endeavour to find the main stream, and by
following it, retrace my course to the portage.

I soon fell on the river, but my retrograde march proved exceedingly
toilsome; at every step I was obliged to bend the branches of the
underwood to one side and another, or pressing them down under my
feet, force my way through by main strength: some short spaces indeed
intervened, that admitted of an easier passage; still my progress was
so slow that the sun appeared before I reached the upper end of the
portage. Finding an old canoe here, belonging to the post, I resolved
on crossing to the opposite side of the river, where I knew there was
a path that led to the house, by which the Indians often passed when
travelling in small canoes. I accordingly ran to the lower end of the
portage for a paddle, where I found my men still asleep; and having
heard that the lower end of this path came out exactly opposite to the
upper end of the portage, I struck out into the woods the moment I
landed, fancying that I could not fail to discover it.

The sun got higher and higher as I proceeded, and I went faster and
yet faster, to no purpose;--no path appeared; and I at length became
convinced that I was lost--being equally in difficulty to find my way
back to the river as forward to the post.

The weather was very sultry; and such had been the drought of the
season that all the small creeks were dried up, so that I could
nowhere procure a drop of water to moisten my parched lips. The
sensations occasioned by thirst are so much more painful than those we
feel from hunger, that although I had eaten but little the preceding
day, and nothing on that day, I never thought of food. While my inner
man was thus tortured by thirst, my outer man scarcely suffered less
from another cause. The country through which I passed being of a
marshy nature, I was incessantly tormented by the venomous flies that
abound in such situations,--my shirt, and only other habiliment,
having sustained so much damage in my nocturnal expedition, that the
insects had free access _partout_.[1]

[1] There are three different kinds of these tormenting
insects, viz. the mosquito, the black-fly, and the gnat--the
latter the same as the midge in N. Britain--who relieve each
other regularly in the work of torture. The mosquitoes
continue at their post from dawn to eight or nine o'clock,
A.M.; the black-flies succeed, and remain in the field till