NARRATIVE. 117 



About three quarters of a mile from the falls we struck the 

 portage path, running through deep moist woods. Across it were 

 laid logs, at short distances apart, so that it was like walking on a 

 railroad where the sleepers have not been filled in. An explanation 

 soon presented itself, in a smooth, narrow trench in the middle of 

 the path, such as would be made by the keel of a vessel, and on 

 each side the traces of a heavy body dragged over the ground ; 

 we conjectured that it was an arrangement for facilitating the trans- 

 port of the heavy bateaux that come down from Hudson's Bay. 

 When we reached the head of the portage we found we had guessed 

 rightly, for here lay several large boats ready to be hauled across. 

 These bateaux measure generally twenty-eight feet in the keel and 

 near forty above, and are very heavily built, yet as Mr. Swanston 

 afterwards told us, the voyageurs make nothing of the portage, and 

 amuse themselves with racing the boats against each other over 

 the path. 



At the head of the portage we found ourselves a good way 

 above the falls, but there was no appearance of a path, so we made 

 our way down stream through the tangled arbor-vitaes, and soon 

 came out in front of the upper fall. 



Michipicotin Falls consist of three cascades of about equal heights, 

 separated by short intervals of rapids ; the total descent is upwards 

 of eighty feet. At each fall the river is compressed to the width 

 of a few yards between projecting points of rock, and below each 

 expands again somewhat. 



The rock is a gray sienite, broken into huge parallelograms, some 

 lying about in loose fragments, in others, the cleavage lines indi- 

 cated on the face of the rock having a dip of about 20 southwest, 

 that is, at right angles with the fall. These projecting points and 

 detached fragments of hard rock in the bed of the cascade, give it a 

 peculiar character. Thus at the foot of the second fall the whole 

 mass of water is thrown upwards again in a vast fountain of spray, 

 from the resistance of some obstacle below the surface. 



The third or lower fall is very striking. Whether from the sudden 

 expanse of the channel, which becomes somewhat wider here, or 

 from the shape of its bed, it forms a regular half-dome of broken 

 water, a most magnificent spectacle, not at all like any other large 



