OF THE POLAR SEA. 



183 



entered the Black Bear Island Lake, the navigation of which re- 

 quires a very experienced pilot. Its length is twenty-two miles, 

 and its breadth varies from three to five, yet it is so choaked with 

 islands, that no channel is to be found through it, exceeding a mile 

 in breadth. At sunset we landed ; and encamped on an island, and 

 at six A. M. on the 24th, left the lake, and crossed three portages 

 into another, which has, probably, several communications with the 

 last, as that by which we passed is too narrow to convey the whole 

 body of the Missinnippi. At one of these portages called the Pin 

 Portage is a rapid, about ten yards in length, with a descent of ten 

 or twelve feet, and beset with rocks. Light canoes sometimes 

 venture down this fatal gulf, to avoid the portage, unappalled by 

 the warning crosses which overhang the brink, the mournful records 

 of former failures. 



The Hudson's Bay Company's people whom we passed on the 

 23rd, going to the rock house with their furs, were badly provided 

 with food, of which we saw distressing proofs at every portage 

 behind them. They had stripped the birch trees of their rind to 

 procure the soft pulpy vessels in contact with the wood, which are 

 sweet, but very insufficient to satisfy a craving appetite. 



The lake to the westward of the Pin Portage, is called Sandfly 

 Lake ; it is seven miles long, and a wide channel connects it with 

 the Serpent Lake, the extent of which to the southward we could 

 not discern. There is nothing remarkable in this chain of lakes, except 

 their shapes being rocky basins filled by the waters of the Missinnippi, 

 insulating the massy eminences, and meandering with almost imper- 

 ceptible current between them. From the Serpent to the Sandy 

 Lake, it is again confined in a narrow space by the approach of its 

 winding banks, and on the 26th we were some hours employed in 

 traversing a series of shallow rapids, where it was necessary to 

 lighten the canoes. Having missed the path through the woods, we 

 walked two miles in the water upon sharp stones, from which some 



