CANOES 31 



epoch with three significant events : the end of 

 the last Indian and half-breed war in Canada, 

 the completion of the first trans-continental 

 Canadian railway, and the return from Egypt 

 of the first and last Canadians to go on an 

 oversea campaign as professed voyageurs. 



Under the French regime the fur trade 

 reached well past Lake Superior. Nepigon and 

 the Kaministikwia were the two most im- 

 portant junctions of routes at the western end 

 of the lake. Under British rule the Montreal 

 * fur lords ' used the * Grand Portage,' which 

 ends on a bay of Lake Superior some way south 

 of the modern Fort William. It was a regular 

 bush road, nearly ten miles long, made to avoid 

 the falls of the Pigeon. As early as 1783, the 

 year in which King George III first recognized 

 the United States as an independent power, the 

 fur lords kept no less than five hundred men 

 in constant work at the height of the season, 

 during the latter half of August. Horses and 

 oxen were used later on; but the voyageur 

 himself was the chief beast of burden here, 

 as everywhere else. There were two kinds 

 of voyageur. One was the mere merchant 

 carrier, who went from Montreal to the Grand 

 Portage in big boats of four tons burden having 

 a crew of ten men. These were the ' pork 



