NATURAL HISTORY AND PHYSIOGRAPHY OF NEW BRUNSWICK. 
33 
portage was worth recovery, I made a study of the surround- 
ings in August, 1913, with some surveys presented on the 
accompanying map. Since then I have gathered all the 
additional information I could concerning the place. 
The East and West Branches of North Fork stream come 
together in an extensive open natural meadow a little south 
of the New Railway, as shown by the map. Just at the 
Forks, and a little way up the East Branch, the meadow is 
high, dry and firm, — sufficiently so for the growth of bushes, 
brambles, and dry mosses, and to form an excellent landing 
(in a cove just up the East Branch) and a very good camp 
ground. Here a portage road, coming up the North Fork, 
crosses the East Branch, runs over a hundred yards of meadow 
to upland, ascends gradually a marked ridge and then keeps 
on high ground all the way to the lake by a route shown from 
survey on the map. On the highest part of this ridge stands 
the abandoned Residency (used in the building of the rail- 
road), and off to the eastward the railroad crosses an extensive 
open bog-barren, beyond which it comes to upland again, and 
the valley in which the East Branch crosses the railroad. 
The East Branch itself above the Forks is an extremely 
winding stream of deadwaters in meadow swinging occasionally 
close to the ridge and easily navigable for some distance, 
As to the position of the old Indian portage, the evidence 
is somewhat conflicting. Chief James Paul of Saint Marys, 
the best informed of the older Maliseet Indians, has told me 
that formerly he had a hunting camp on the Lake where 
Rider’s camps now are, and that he used the portage fre- 
quently on his hunting trips. He says that the portage 
started exactly from the Forks, and ran directly, crossing the 
open barren, to the southern cove of the lake. Mr. I. T. 
Hetherington, earlier mentioned for his interest in these 
inquiries, told me at first that the portage started from the 
Forks; but later he interviewed an old resident of the North 
Fork who knows the place and remembers the portage well, 
and was assured by him that it left the East Branch about 
three-fourths of a mile up from the Forks, reaching the lake 
about fifty rods east of Rider’s camps. Quite independently 
of this testimony, Mr. S. E. McDonald, another of my kind 
and interested correspondents, has sent me information which 
seems conclusive. He tells me that he knew the Indian 
portage well in his youth, when it was called by the old men, 
the “Indian carry.’’ It left the East Branch at a bend, 
about one mile up from the Forks and ran directly up a 
gentle slope to the lake, crossing the end of an open bog barren 
