[ganong] historic SITES IN NEW BRUNSWICK 237 



Monro^ as to the Misseguash — Baie Verte portage. I have seen some- 

 thing very similar on the old portage path around Indian Falls on the 

 Nepisiguit, but I am inclined to think it is the hob-nailed and spiked shoes 

 of the lumbermen which have scored these rocks, and not Indian moc- 

 casins; and it is altogether likely that this explanation will apply also to 

 the case mentioned by Gesner, whose over-enthusiastic temperament 

 led him into exaggerated statements. In JS"ew Brunswick the lines of 

 regular travel seem to have followed exclusively the rivers and the port- 

 age paths between their heads, and there is no evidence whatever of 

 former extensive trails leading from one locality to another through the 

 woods, such as are well known to have existed in Massachusetts. The 

 différence in the distribution and navigabiUty of the rivers amply explain 

 this, difference. It is not, of course, to be supposed that the Indians never 

 departed frojn these routes ; in their hunting expeditions they undoubt- 

 edly wandered far and wide, and especially in the valleys of the smaller 

 and navigable brooks. Moreover, they undoubtedly had portages used 

 only on rare occasions, and also at times forced their way over between 

 streams where there was no regular route,- but in general the main livers 

 gave them ample facilities for through travel from one part of the prov- 

 ince to another, and they had no other method. The birch canoe was 

 the universal vehicle of locomotion to the New Brunswick Indian ; it was 

 to him what the pony is to the Indian of the West. 



The labour of crossing the portages was always severe, but the Indians 

 took, and take, it philosophically, as they do everything that cannot be 

 helped.' While canoe travel in good weather, on full and easy rivers, is 

 altogether charming, it becomes otherwise when low water, long portages 

 and bad weather prevail. Wc obtain vivid pictures of its hardships from 

 the narratives of St. Yalier, and from several of the Jesuit missionaries.* 



Since many of the portage paths are still in use by Indians, hunters, 

 and lumbermen, their positions are easy to identify, and many of them 

 are marked upon the excellent maps of the Geological Survey. Many 

 others, however, have been long disused, and have been more or less 

 obliterated by settlement, or by roads which follow them,^ and these are 



1 See later page, under Portages, 7 A. 



- In their hunting expeditions the Indians often left their canoes where the 

 poi'tages were long and difficult, and constructed new ones of spruce bark for tem- 

 porary use on lakes. Gordon refers to spruce bark canoes (Wilderness Journeys, 

 page 51), as does Hind (Geological Report, page 153). Other references occur in 

 Thoreau, Maine Woods (Ed. 186t, p. 206), and in History of Houlton, p. 25, John 

 Gyles, in his narrative (p. 20), speaks of canoes made of moose hide. 



3 Allan (117, 118), gives a good idea of this. 



■• See, for instance, Jesuit Relations, xxxvii, 245. 



5 Whites and Indians, actuated by the same motives, i. e., to find the shortest 

 and easiest route between two river basins, would naturally run portage paths and 

 highway roads over the same course. This was the case with tlie Eel River-North 

 Lake portage and many others. 



