Forest and Stream 
$3 a Year, 10 Cts. a Copy, 
Six Months, $1.50. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, MAY 31, 1913. 
VOL. LXXX.—No. 28. 
127 Franklin St., New York, 
Grand Portage 
A Forgotten American Highway 
A Long Trip in Short Instalments—Number One 
I N the unpublished diary of David Thompson 
in the vaults of the Provincial Parliament 
Buildings, in Queen’s Park, Toronto, occur 
these entries, dated Grande Portage, 1799: 
June II. Le Lary arrived with 19 packs 
of fur, 80 lbs. each. 
June 14. The Lake Winnipeg, Isle Por¬ 
tage, Rainy Lake and Montreal canoes ar¬ 
rive. 
June 16. Four canoes of MacGillivray’s 
and Sager’s from Fond du Lac arrive late 
at night. 
June 18. The Montreal canoes arrive. 
June 24. Harrison, and 5 canoes loaded 
with goods and provisions arrive at 10 
A. M. The sloop Otter with furs sailed 
for the Falls of St. Mary. 
June 25 . Several Northwest Company 
canoes arrive from Montreal. 
June 30. In the afternoon Mr. Todd 
from Fort des Prairies (Edmonton) ar¬ 
rives, and several canoes at the other end 
of Portage. 
July I. Roderick MacKenzie in a large 
canoe arrives from Montreal with letters. 
July 2.—Grant, McLeod, McTavish and 
James Mackenzie arrive from Athabasca 
and English River, and McKay from the 
Swamp country. 
July 10. In the afternoon McDougall, 
McLeod, Roderick and James Mackenzie 
went off for Athabasca. 
July 12. Alexander Mackenzie arrives. 
These old entries, in the faded, brown ink 
and the fine crabbed writing, give an insight 
into the place and importance of Grande Por¬ 
tage one hundred years ago. David Thompson 
was an explorer and astronomer for the fur 
companies, and it was he who surveyed much 
of the international boundary west of the lakes. 
Grande Portage in his day was the principal 
point on Lake Superior, and indeed one of the 
important points of the continent. 
Before the first conception of the Union 
Pacific or the Central Pacific R. R., before even 
the Oregon or the Dawson trails, the one link 
between the Great Lakes and the great West 
was a footpath nine months long, known as La 
Grande Portage, or in English the Big Carry, 
and it is still there. They pronounce it a little 
By S. H. HOWARD 
differently nowadays, but the name is still the 
same. And you may cross the nine miles of 
road to the Cascades at Pigeon River on a path 
that has been in more or less use ever since the 
French period in this country and likely enough 
long before. It’s a fairly straight road cut 
through the bush about wheel wide. The Pigeon 
River Lumber Company brushed it out two or 
three years ago, and they take stuff into their 
camps that way sometimes in the winter. Great 
burned pine logs and blackened stubs stick up 
through the young spruce, birch and poplar each 
side, save in one short section where the great 
fire of 1845 must have skipped. Grande Portage 
cut right through a great pinery when the North¬ 
westers used it. You come out nowadays at 
the Cascades, where you’ll find a lively lumber 
camp on the Canadian side, across an engineer¬ 
ing marvel they call a dam. The Pigeon River 
pitches itself into a cavernous gorge at this 
point, and the lumber jacks have built a but¬ 
tressed barrier across the top and a gate for 
the logs by which they are led several flights 
downstairs. Previously they had blasted out a 
new channel to the left and sheeted the jagged 
rocks with iron so that the logs would glance. 
But this channel had a right angled turn, and 
the timber used to go round so fast the logs 
broke. So they made a straight stairway of it, 
and run them down after the dam accumulates 
enough water for a flood. In mid-summer water 
is low, and they have only enough sometimes for 
one flood in a day. 
One hundred years ago Port Charlotte stood 
on the river a short distance above this camp, 
and rather than build dams and follow the tumb¬ 
ling Pigeon to its mouth, the Northwest Com¬ 
pany wisely unloaded their cargoes there and 
cut across a corner of modern Minnesota, to 
Lake Superior at Grande Portage Bay. 
The pack strap and the paddle formed the 
principal means of livelihood in that country 
GARGANTUA RIVER, NORTH SHORE OF LAKE SUPERIOR. 
