60 WITH GUN AND GUIDE 



ing toward the camp which we had just left. The 

 guides at once identified the tracks as having been 

 made by the two men whom we found in that camp 

 upon our arrival there. 



On reaching Birch Lake, two freshly cut logs were 

 found in the water, tied together with pieces of rope, 

 on which rude but safe raft they had crossed the lake 

 the day before. For our crossing we had a pirogue or 

 dugout, which carried the three of us and our outfit 

 without any trouble. There was quite a portage over 

 a ridge, in crossing which Henry shot three more par- 

 tridges. I don't know how it came about, but in cross- 

 ing this steep portage I could not but think of a famous 

 portage a three days' journey up the Peribonca River, 

 which flows into Lake St. John, Quebec, from the north 

 which I crossed in 1893. 



The Peribonca River is nearly three-fourths of a 

 mile wide at its mouth. It runs through a strata of 

 Laurentian rock and is bordered on both sides or was 

 then by a dense forest of spruce and white birch 

 trees. No houses grace its banks and no roads afford 

 facilities for walking. The river is the sole avenue of 

 communication between the lake and its headwaters, 

 nearly five hundred miles away. The river narrows 

 frequently to a width of say sixty feet, because of ob- 

 structions from projecting ledges of rock on both sides. 



At this particular portage, which is on the left-hand 

 side of the stream going up, the rock rises above the 



