[ganong] historic SITES IN NEW BRUNSWICK 239 



the Micmac for Portage, and a diminutive of it. Portage Island has 

 probably a different origin, as I have elsewhere shown.' The word 

 Portage, as applied to a road, however, by no means implies that there 

 was formerly a portage path in that vicinity ; for it has been adopted by 

 lumbermen, and is applied by them to the roads over which they haul 

 their supplies to the lumber camps, and in this sense it occurs several 

 times upon our best maps, and is thus used in some books. Moreover, 

 the first roads built by the whites between rivers were called Portages ; 

 thus we have the Avery portage from Nashwaak to the Miramichi, and 

 the Brown portage, from Shikatehawk to Miramichi. 



Very important testimony upon the location of ancient portage- 

 routes is given us not only in the works of Champlain, Lescarbot, Denys 

 and others, but especially by the, (for its time) very fine map of 

 Franquelin-DeMeulles of 1686, reproduced in the preceding monograph 

 of this series, page 364.^ In many cases, it shows portage-routes by 

 connecting the rivers by a continuous line, as may readily be seen by 

 comparing it with a modern map, or with Map. No. 12 in this pajjer. 



The most important of the Indian routes of travel were along the 

 sea-coasts and along the St. John River, and the latter was even more 

 important than the former. I shall accordingly treat it first in detail, 

 and then pass to consider its communication through its branches with 

 the important inhabited basins, the Passamaquoddy, Penobscot, Petit- 

 codiac, Miramichi, Eestigouche, St. Lawrence, at the same time consider- 

 ing the communication of these basins with one another. I have tried to 

 make the following list complete, and think I have missed very few, if 

 any, of the portage routes. 



The remarkable ease of communication of the St. John Eiver with 

 the other rivers has attracted attention of every writer from Champlain, 

 Lescarbot and Denys down to those of the present day. It is really a 

 most remarkable fact about this river, that, stretching away through the 

 centre of the great New Brunswick-Maine peninsula as it does, it should 

 send navigable branches into such close and easy communication with 

 every other river system in that peninsula.^ 



1. Along the St. John. 



Of all Indian routes of travel in what is now the Pro^^nce of New 

 Brunswick, the most important by far was that along the River St. John. 

 This river was, and is, an ideal stream for canoe navigation. It not only has 

 easy communication with every other river system in this and the neigh- 



1 Place Nomenclature, page 263. 



2 Unfortunately the Ottawa copy of this important map, from which the cut in 

 my monograph was made, is full of errors and omits many names, as proven by a 

 copy recently corrected for me by careful comparison with the original in Paris. 



3 The physiographic explanation of the fact is, however, plain. It depends upon 

 past changes in our river-systems, by which certain rivers have robbed the water 

 from the heads of others ; the portage paths follow parts of ancient valleys. 



