NARRATIVE. 37 



readiness to forward his plans, giving him letters to the gentlemen 

 in charge of the various posts on the lake, which were highly ser- 

 viceable to us. 



Dr. C. T. Jackson and the gentlemen engaged with him m the 

 geological survey of the copper region of the south shore of Lake 

 Superior, also arrived to-daj'-, and his assistant, Mr. Foster, gave the 

 Prof, some valuable information, particularly concerning Neepigon 

 Bay, which he had visited. 



Mr. McLeod, of the Sault, lent to the Professor Bayfield's large 

 map of the Lake, (which we had not been able to procure,) enriched 

 with manuscript notes, and gave him the results of various geologi- 

 cal excursions on the lake. 



June dOtJi. — Rainy. Nevertheless, our preparations being made, 

 we decided to start. It was necessary to convey our multifarious 

 luggage to the upper end of the portage, above the rapids, a distance 

 of about two-thirds of a mile. Walking thither in the rain, over a 

 road made across the swamp, the surface of which is strewed with 

 bowlders of various sizes, we found a collection of warehouses and a 

 few log-cabins, just at the commencement of the rapids. Here our 

 boats were moored at a wharf at the extremity of which was a huge 

 crane for unloading copper ore. Here also lay at anchor several 

 schooners, and a propeller that runs along the south shore, and 

 occasionally crosses to Fort William. 



Our boats were three in number ; one large Mackinaw boat and 

 two canoes of about four fathoms' length. One of these canoes was 

 kindly lent to us by Prof. James Hall, of Albany, the other we hired ; 

 the boat we had been obliged to buy, giving eighty dollars for it. It 

 proved a considerable hindrance to speed, being always behind, ex- 

 cept when the wind was aft and fresh. Our luggage, however, with the 

 collections of specimens and the apparatus for collecting, could not be 

 carried in canoes without uncomfortably loading them. From my own 

 subsequent experience I should say that what is called a " five-man- 

 boat," is the craft best adapted for such an occasion as ours, and 

 this opinion was confirmed by a gentleman at the Sault who had 

 tried the experiment. The canoes were precisely what one sees 

 from Maine to Michigan, birch-bark stretched by two layers of thin, 

 flat, wooden ribs, one transverse, the other longitudinal, placed close 

 together, with a strip of wood round the gunnel, and the whole 



