86 ON THE GREAT CHURCHILL RIVER 



on the shoals of black and red suckers, many of 

 which are easily cornered and captured in shallow 

 channels and pools in the angular, rocky steps 

 of a fall. 



June 26. — To-day we travelled Island Lake, 

 the last lake expansion between us and the mouth 

 of the Reindeer River, where our journey on the 

 Churchill would end. Island Lake held beauti- 

 ful scenery. After leaving the east end of the 

 lake, which was something like many of the 

 others in rough shores of bewildering outline, 

 there lay before us a wide expanse of water, the 

 clean-cut shores of which had straight distances 

 of green grass and coniferous tree-trunks rising 

 perpendicularly from the earth, their bases un- 

 screened by willows. Nearing the north-west 

 end of the lake there were a few pretty islands 

 where bright grass blended with the darker green 

 of shapely poplar trees. The water of the lake 

 was clear, so clear that it sometimes permitted a 

 view of the clean, stony bottom through a good 

 depth of water. 



In the afternoon, after spending some time 

 searching through one or two of the islands, we 

 reached the end of Island Lake and there located 

 Frog Portage on the south shore opposite an 

 island, where the river takes a sharp turn into 

 the north-east. Frog Portage is an overland 

 link into Lake of the Woods, which is the north 

 end of the Sturgeonweir River route, that runs 

 150 miles south to Cumberland House and thence 

 forty-five miles east to The Pas in northern 

 Manitoba, where, for the present, terminates 

 the railway service on the Canadian Northern 



