An Expedition down the Begh-ula. 31 



to a part of it lower down, where the Indians informed us 

 it was sufficiently deep. Till noon of the 9th was accord- 

 ingly spent in doing so, and during the remainder of that 

 day and till the afternoon of the next: we toiled in a river from 

 one to ten yards wide, extremely tortuous in its course, with 

 the navigation impeded by immense quantities of. drift- 

 wood. We had considerable difficulty in getting on. The 

 wood had to be cut and afterwards removed before we 

 could proceed. On the afternoon of the 10th it was found 

 utterly impracticable to make any further progress. The 

 drift-wood was in such large piles as would occupy more 

 time for its removal than we could spare. Another portage 

 was therefore decided on. Several Indians who had joined 

 us on our route hither were sent on ahead, with all the 

 ' pieces,' to the junction of this river (called the Iroquois 

 after my steersman) with that coming from a lake known 

 as the "La Porte," and lying three days' march to the 

 north-east of Good Hope, and we made a portage of six 

 miles with the canoes to a part of the Iroquois, on which 

 we launched them. Finding it deeper and clearer of drift- 

 wood we reached its mouth early next day. The Iroquois 

 flows through a flat plain, bounded on both sides by two 

 ridges of ground composed of sand and fragmentary rock, 

 and well covered with pine and willow. The driftwood on 

 this river is doubtless the accumulation of many years. Its 

 course is so very tortuous that any floating wood easily gets 

 jammed between the growing trees on both banks, and 

 thus forms into large piles, so that very little of it ever 

 reaches its mouth. 



Halting for an hour, we then embarked the ' pieces ' and 

 commenced the descent of Lockhart Eiver (I have named 

 it after a friend and brother officer), finding it much 

 broader and deeper than the Iroquois and the adjacent 

 country better timbered. The river varies in breadth from 50 

 to 300 yards, the greater breadth occurring near its mouth, 

 where it receives the waters of three small rivers, two 

 of them coming from the westward and the third from 

 the east. A strong head wind greatly retarded us in 



