A JOURNEY TO THE RED RIVER 65 



from the northern and western stations, to transfer the 

 cargos of several of the smaller canoes to a canote de 

 maitre for the completion of the journey. The smaller 

 canoes are called " north canoes " ; it would puzzle a 

 Philadelphia lawyer to tell why, for they are used south 

 as much as north. 



Fort William is a palisaded structure ; and the two 

 shots I suggested for the Yankee post at St. Mary's Leap 

 would be equally efficacious here. In other words, it is 

 useless as a military post. It is placed at the mouth of 

 a stream called the Kamenistaquoia, which empties itself 

 into the lake a little to the southward of Thunder Bay. 

 There are two other small streams in the neighbourhood; 

 and in the days of the French these were called " Three 

 Rivers." and there was a post, or mission, here at a very 

 early period in the seventeenth century. This " Three 

 Rivers " must not be confounded with the " Trois Rivers " 

 of Lower Canada. One of the three streams has been 

 known for at least two hundred years as the river Long. 

 They are all shallow, and of no importance for navigating 

 purposes except by canoes. 



This was the Fort William of a quarter of a century 

 ago. But to-day the place is an electric-lighted township 

 of, with the suburb of Port Arthur, some 10,000 or 

 12,000 inhabitants ! There is an electric tramway, a 

 railway station, and a corporate body who make " bye- 

 laws." The pleasant tree-covered prairie is converted 

 into a huge, wide-spreading cornfield ; and the former 

 fishiDg depot is now an important corn-shipping port 

 dealing with many million bushels of grain yearly. In a 

 word, the land that I knew, and describe in this chapter 

 as a glorious wilderness, is now a civilised region suffering 

 from all the blessings and curses of that state. 



Of the gulls on the lake there were several species, 

 only one or two of which I could recognise with certainty 

 from skins afterwards submitted to American naturalists. 

 According to the people of Fort Willi ain several of these 



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