254 
FOREST AND STREAM 
JUNE, 1917 
FOLLOWING A FORGOTTEN FUR TRAIL 
THE FASCINATION OF THE UNUSUAL IN CANOE TRIPS 
LEAD TWO HUDSON BAY ROVERS EVENTUALLY TO—GOLD! 
By WILLIAMS HAYNES 
Author of “Casco Bay Yarns,” “On the Bass Frontier,” and other tales. (Photographs by the author.) 
A MONG the forgotten, unofficial rec¬ 
ords of the Honorable Hudson Bay 
Company is an extract from the diary 
kept nearly a century ago by one Robert 
MacDonald, a trader on Lake Abitibi: 
“John and two Indians arrived at the 
Post today from Great Island, coming by 
way of lakes Penache, Wanapitay, and 
Temmagamie to Timicamming, and 
thence as usual, saving eight days, but 
no route for a heavy load, he reports.” 
The fur traders’ usual route to Abitibi 
and Hudson bay from Manitoulin island, 
and indeed from the whole Georgian bay 
region, was by the French river, still a 
famous canoe trip. But it is the unusual 
canoe trip that has the strongest fascina¬ 
tion for me, and I have long wanted to 
follow the forgotten trail first blazed by 
that unknown John and his two Indians. 
That “no route for a heavy load” says 
plainly that he encountered either lots of 
rushing, foaming rapids, or else long, 
heavy portages—possibly both—but he got 
through, and he saved eight days! A 
fillip of good adventure is promised in 
such a canoe trip. 
There is, however, no more deceptive 
business than planning a new canoe trip 
by the map. Where there are half a dozen 
little R’s strung along a watercourse, you 
find no rapids. So, after scouting along 
cautiously for a day or so, you grow reck¬ 
less; and then before you know it you are 
in half a mile of wicked white water where 
there are no R’s at all on the map. What 
looks to be a nice, straight portage, meas¬ 
uring up by the scale as about half a mile 
long proves to be a twisting up-and-down- 
hill trail it takes an hour of hard plugging 
to cross. Moreover, it is not only in 
these provoking details that the map-plan¬ 
ned canoe trip goes askew. More than 
once I have traced out on paper a seem¬ 
ingly simple and feasible route, to find that 
no mortal man could ever get through that 
particular chain of lakes which promised 
to be the easiest part of the way. 
A ccordingly, despite the large 
scale Government map and the 
diary, I was not surprised, when I 
camped on Lake Penache last summer, to 
find that local authorities differed in their 
opinions on the forgotten fur trail. In 
the old days only the voyageur, traveling 
light and in a hurry, essayed that route 
between Penache and Temagami; now their 
short cut has lost its point, for one can 
Who hath smelt wood-smoke at twilight? 
Who hath heard the birch-log 
burning? 
Who is quick to read the noises of the 
night? 
Let him follow with the others, for the 
Young Men’s feet are turning 
To the camps of proved desire and 
known delight. 
take the Canadian Pacific at Whitefish and 
be at Temagami that night. They re¬ 
joiced in a route that saved eight days 
between points one can now reach in two * 
days.—Small wonder their trail has been 
forgotten! 
Big, bluff, be-whiskered Dan Sheehan, 
the first and only white settler in the Pen¬ 
ache country, said: “Sure, a man should 
get to Wanapitay through LaVasse and 
Long Lakes; but the saints preserve me 
from the trip!” 
Stocky little Charlie Rameau, the 
French trapper whose cabin is on one of 
the Penache islands, was sure one could 
get to Lake Wanapitay, but beyond that 
—“it is necessary that one must then make 
his own trail, m’sieu;” and he shrugged 
his shoulders skeptically. 
Bob Scott, the head fire ranger, was 
We Rigged a Sail and Glided Quickly 
Through Threemile Lake 
professionally optimistic. “If there's a 
route there, sir,” he said emphatically, “the 
rangers know it, and they’re keeping the 
portages clean and marked with fire no¬ 
tices.” 
No doubt he is right; but it was getting 
late in the season for so long a trip over 
an unknown course. And since they all 
agreed there were three trails going south¬ 
ward from Penache to Georgian bay, I re¬ 
solved to go over only the first link in the 
old fur trail. 
So when old Nabish and her grand¬ 
daughters paddled over from the squaw’s 
island to sell us their wild raspberries, I 
asked if Dave, her son-in-law, would go 
down to Georgian bay with me. Dave is 
a “good Indian” and I knew he had 
worked on the lumber drive down to the 
bay. But Dave had gone back to the 
Reservation. My comrade in camp was 
not • well, and it would have been hardly 
fair to carry off our guide for a week’s 
trip. Dan Sheehan was working against 
time to harvest the wild hay in his beaver 
meadows. Charlie Rameau had just taken 
unto himself a pretty Indian bride. Yet 
the trip was not one to take alone, as 
any man knows who has tried to portage 
his own canoe and duffle through the 
northern Ontario bush. 
T HE Doctor came to my rescue. He 
paddled over to our camp one morn¬ 
ing and, as is his fashion, said 
bluntly, “I hear you’re thinking of going 
down to the mouth of the Whitefish river, 
and back by way of Collins inlet. I’ll go 
with you.” 
Neither of us had been over the route; 
but Dan drew a rough map in the back of 
my note book, supplementing it with such 
copious notes as: “through Bear lake 
rapids, follow left shore of lake to big bay; 
foot of bay a portage, 300 yards,” etc. 
Everyone agreed we should be back at 
Penache in a week, and as we could re¬ 
provision at Little Current, we would 
travel light. We cut down our camp kit 
too, as low as possible—a nest of aluminum 
cooking utensils, a couple of blankets and 
a poncho each, a change of clothes, an 
eight-foot square of Tatelec waterproof 
canvas to serve at once as tent and tar¬ 
paulin in case it rained, my camera, and 
the Doctor’s geologist’s hammer. 
Our course lay right through the Long 
lake district where the prospectors are 
hunting gold, and the Doctor cherished the 
