THE RED RIVER EXPEDITION. 247 



heavily laden for ten of them. At some portages 

 considerable engineering ingenuity was required 

 small streams had to be bridged and marshy spots to 

 be corduroyed over. By the time our men returned 

 many of them were expert axemen, and all were more 

 or less skilled in the craft of the voyageur and Ameri- 

 can woodsman. 



The country between Prince Arthur's Landing and 

 Shebandowan Lake is wild and rugged. The road 

 between those two places runs "\V.X."W., and may, 

 for purposes of description, be divided into three sec- 

 tions the first extending to Strawberry Creek, about 

 eighteen miles ; the second to the Matawan River, 

 about eight miles farther on ; and the third from 

 thence to Shebandowan Lake, about twenty -two 

 miles more. 



The first section is very hilly, the soil near the bay 

 being sandy, with a surface-covering at most places 

 of from six to twenty-nine inches of peaty mould. 

 In the valleys between the hills are deep swamps, 

 over which roads can only be made with considerable 

 labour. The timber has been entirely destroyed at 

 some places by fires, so that every now and then the 

 road emerges from the thick forest into clear open 

 spaces sometimes of many hundreds of acres in ex- 

 tent, where the ground is covered with the burnt 

 trunks of fallen trees, piled up at places one over the 

 other like spilh'kins, an occasional pine of great height 

 being left standing as it were to show the traveller 



