en more than the quantity, requires
operatives of iron mould. In smooth water, the paddle is plied with
twice the rapidity of the oar, taxing both arms and lungs to the utmost
extent. Amid shallows, the canoe is literally dragged by the men, wading
to their knees or their loins, while each poor fellow, after replacing
his drier half in his seat, laughingly strikes the heavier of the wet
from his legs over the gunwale, before he gives them an inside berth. In
rapids, the towing line has to be hauled along over rocks and stumps,
through swamps and thickets, excepting that when the ground is utterly
impracticable, poles are substituted, and occasionally also the bushes
on the shore."

This however is "plain sailing," to the Portages, where the tracks are
of all imaginable kinds and degrees of badness, and the canoes and their
cargoes are never carried across in less than two or three trips; the
little vessels alone monopolizing, in the first turn, the more expert
half of their respective crews. Of the baggage, each man has to carry at
least two pieces, estimated at a hundred and eighty pounds weight, which
he suspends in slings placed across his forehead, so that he may have
his hands free, to clear his way among the branches and standing or
fallen trunks. Besides all this, the _voyageur_ performs the part of
bridge, or jetty, on the arrival of the canoe at its place of rest, the
gentlemen passengers being carried on shore on the backs of these
good-humoured and sinewy fellows.

For the benefit of the untravelled, we should say, that a Portage is the
fragment of land-passage between the foot and head of a rapid, when the
rush of the stream is too strong for the tow-rope.

At one of the halting-places on Lake Superior, a curious tale was told
of the Indian's belief in a Providence, of which it had been the scene.

Three or four years before, a party of Salteaux, much pressed for
hunger, were anxious to reach one of their fishing stations, an island
about twenty miles from the shore. The spring had unluckily reached that
point, when there was neither clear water, nor trustworthy ice. A
council was being held, to consider the hard alternatives of drowning
and starving, when an old man of influence thus spoke:

"You know, my friends, that the Great Spirit gave one of our squaws a
child yesterday; now, he cannot have sent it into the world to take it
away again directly. I should therefore recommend the carrying the child