NATURAL HISTORY AND PHYSIOGRAPHY OF NEW BRUNSWICK . 447 
but, because of its rocky foundation, its main features are doubt- 
less not very different from their condition at the time when 
the path was last in use. 
The terrace beside the path offers fair opportunity for a 
camp ground, of which, however there is now no trace, nor does 
Mr. Hutchison remember any. One thinks at once of the 
attractive camp ground with an even better landing a little 
closer to Portage Brook, but Mr. Hutchison tells me one impor- 
tant fact which shows that the path could not have started 
there, although the place may have been used as the camp 
ground, namely, the little rivulet west of it comes from extensive 
swamps which swing around north of this place, making very 
bad travelling, while the position assigned by him to the path 
not only keeps it upon dry ground, but is the only position in 
this vicinity which does so. 
No relics of any kind have been found in this immediate 
vicinity, so far as Mr. Hutchison has heard, but on his farm, 
a half mile above, on the pleasant elevated knoll where his house 
is built, Indian hatchets and other relics have been plowed up. 
The surrounding country is largely meadows, intervales, and 
swamps, and therefore inundated at flood times; and this 
explains the occupation of the elevated knolls. 
We consider now the course of the path across country to 
the Richibucto. Here again Mr. Hutchison’s knowledge is 
positive. He knows that the portage was followed by a lumber 
road cut out in the sixty’s by one Vance, for hauling pine timber 
across from the Richibucto to float it down to St. John. This 
road from Salmon River took a course somewhat east of north, 
deviating, when needful, to keep on the higher ground between 
wet places; and in this was so successful that only one wet 
heath was crossed in its entire course. It passed in this way 
between the Hutchison and McCartney meadows, and across 
a corner of the Hutchison lot. All trace of the road has now 
vanished in the new growing woods excepting certain parts 
where it has been kept open by later roads. This happens in 
two instances. Thus a winter road, striking directly north 
from Mr. Hutchison’s farm, comes into the old portage after 
a mile or so, and swings northeast into it for a quarter of a mile 
before turning out northward again to join the main, or Beck- 
with, road. Again, a little to the eastward of this place, the 
Beckwith road itself swings into the line of the old portage, and 
follows it for three-quarters of a mile, again swinging off to the 
eastward as the Richibucto is approached. Still farther east, 
as the Beckwith road nears the Indian Portage Brook, (of 
