15 



Near the height of land, the valleys between the low hill ridges are 

 often quite wide, and are everywhere covered by innumerable lakes, 

 many of which are of great area, but more often of small size. 



These lakes are always connected by small streams, with rapids or 

 falls between them. The streams flowing from these different lake 

 chains join to form the many large rivers which flow out of this area. 

 Along the lower courses of these large rivers, lakes are not common, the 

 greater volume of water having cut through and removed the boulder 

 drift and solid rock barriers, which cause many of the lakes in the 

 interior. From this description it will be seen that our northern 

 country is everywhere covered with a net work of waterways, navigable 

 without much difficulty in any direction with light canoes capable of 

 being transported across the intervening portages. 



It was by one of these waterways, the Bersimis river route, that we 

 reached Mistassini. 



This river empties into the Gulf of St. Lawrence some 169 miles 

 below Quebec. At the mouth is situated a large village of Montagnais 

 Indians. These Indians are under the care of Roman Catholic 

 missionaries, and are well advanced in civilization, many of them own- 

 ing log houses and resorting to the woods only in the fall, where they 

 hunt furs all winter, returning to the village in the spring, and there 

 remain mostly in an idle state during the summer, living on the pi'o- 

 ceeds of their winter's hunt. 



The journey was undertaken in small bark canoes, two men 

 paddling each. The first 45 miles was a monotonous paddle along 

 shore against a strong even current ; between high vertical clay and 

 sand banks, in a river valley from { to 1 mile wide, with walls of 

 gneiss rising from 300 to 600 ft. above the river. The hills and river 

 bottom are covered with a dense forest, the trees being white and black 

 spruce, tamarac, balsam fir, balsam and aspen poplar, white and yellow 

 birch. There is no pine. These trees afford logs 24 inches in diameter 

 at the butt, and are cut into deals by a steam mill at the river mouth. 



At the end of this stretch, which took three days to paddle, the 

 first of a long series of portages was reached. The first portage passes 

 a double fall of 100 ft., with a large whirlpool between, on the edges of 



