NATURAL HISTOR% AND PHYSIOGRAPHY OF NEW BRUNSWICK. 215 
and bog, intersected by some five different brooks all running 
to the eastward, and reached the Gaspereau a half mile above 
the portage. 
The Gaspereau end of the portage has proven equally 
difficult to locate exactly. No known map marks it in any but the 
crudest manner, even the plan by Beckwith, earlier mentioned, 
which professes to show it, being obviously only a sketch. But 
from Mr. Arbo, and especially from Mr. P. H. Welch, one of the 
most valued of my correspondents, who speaks not only from 
his own long and extensive knowledge of that region, but after 
consultation with other old residents, I have learned that the 
path left the Gaspereau above Portage Island, which is half a 
mile above Meadow Brook. This place I have examined and 
mapped with care, but I withhold the map, partly because it 
belongs properly with my note upon the Gaspereau which I hope 
later to publish, and partly because I wish before publishing it 
to re-examine the locality. Portage Island lies in the extreme 
northerly bend of the river. It is an insignificant island, lying 
close to the northern bank, flat, treeless and little more than a 
weed-covered gravel bar; but it is unmistakeable, for it is the 
only island for a long distance up arid down the river. To the 
eastward a bogan separates if from high rocky land leading up 
to a line of sandstone cliffs, while north and west of it lie the 
“Portage Island Flats,” a low open intervale, almost a marsh, 
covered with coarse grass. In our visit I was under the 
impression that the portage path left the river east of the island, 
at a place where a clear little brook falls into the river, paralleled 
by an old lumber road along its western side. Here we detected 
and surveyed a very old path, west of the road, leading up by a 
very easy ascent to the plateau one hundred feet over the river, 
and this we thought was probably the Indian path. But Mr. 
Welch tells me that the path left the river nearly a quarter of a 
mile above Portage Island, and above the intervale flats, and 
that it led up through a ravine or gap in the cliffs which afforded 
the only route to the plateau at this place. Later a lumber 
road was cut along the same route, though now it is quite 
obliterated. Where the path left the river, on the western side, 
was formerly a camping place, now overgrown; and a few years 
ago the washing away of the bank about a hundred yards farther 
down stream brought to light a large store of bullets, doubtless 
buried for safety and never reclaimed. Additional details I 
hope to give with the map in the later note. 
Below the Portage the Gaspereau is a swifter and shallower 
stream than Cains River, but yet is comparatively an easy canoe 
