518 
November, 1917 
away a little store of powder, flour, or 
some of the other necessaries of life, a 
“cache.” The French word “prairie,” as 
everybody knows, has become part and 
parcel of the English language. Indians 
and half-breeds, who never heard French 
spoken in their lives, greet each other at 
meeting and parting with the salutation 
“bo-jour” and “adieu.” And so the word 
“portage” has come to be generally used 
to denote the piece of dry land separating 
two rivers or lakes over which it is neces¬ 
sary to carry canoes and baggage when 
traveling through the country in summer. 
Sometimes it is literally translated and 
called a “carry.” 
Another French word, “traverse,” is fre¬ 
quently used in canoeing, to signify a large 
unsheltered piece of water which it is nec¬ 
essary to cross. A deeply laden birch- 
bark canoe will not stand a great deal of 
sea, and quite a heavy sea gets up very 
rapidly on large fresh-water lakes, so that 
a long “traverse” is a somewhat formidable 
matter. You may want to cross a lake, say 
five or six miles in width, but of such a 
size that it would take you a couple of 
days to coast all round. That open stretch 
of water would be called a “traverse.” 
