CHAP. in. THE MOISIE RAPIDS. 31 



over level rocks or down steep hills. From the summit 

 level a grand view of the Eapids is obtained, as well as of 

 part of the deep gorge through which the tumbling river 

 flows. As a thunder-storm threatened to wet the flour 

 which had been carried over in bags to the foot of the 

 Eapids, I desired one of the Indians to protect it in the 

 best way he could. After a moment's pause he took 

 a small axe from his waistband, and, approaching some 

 spruce trees, peeled off large pieces of bark, with which, 

 in a few minutes, he made a covering impervious to rain. 

 By six in the following evening all the baggage had been 

 carried over. We therefore camped at the foot of the 

 Eapids, intending to try and ascend the torrent with our 

 frail little transports on the following morning. 



The Moisie Eapids, when the channel is full, are grand 

 indeed. A river 130 to 180 yards broad leaps through a 

 chasm of zigzag form in six successive steps. The fall 

 does not exceed sixty feet in a distance of three and a 

 half miles ; but the body of water in the spring of the 

 year is immense, and being pent up in a comparatively 

 narrow channel between rocks and hills about 400 feet 

 in height, it well serves to convey to the mind those im- 

 pressions which are always created by Nature in her wild 

 and stormy moods. One singular feature of the Eapids 

 is the long rows of huge, rounded, and polished boulders 

 which He piled one above another at each turn of the 

 river wherever lodgement can be found. They are im- 

 posing monuments of the power of water and ice ; but, as 

 we afterwards found in the upper country, the boulders of 

 the Grand Eapids are few and diminutive when compared 

 with the infinite number of colossal erratics which lie 

 scattered over the valleys, the hill-sides, and the moim- 



