who happens to have a heavy body, or to make a false step. I say this from experience; for many times I found myself twenty or thirty feet from the point of my departure—happy indeed if, in the fall, I did not violently strike my head against the trunk of some great tree.
At the foot of the mountain an obstacle of a new kind presented itself. All the barriers of snow, the innumerable banks, which had stopped the water of the streams, lakes, and torrents, were broken up during the night, and swelled considerably the Great Portage river.[154] It meanders so remarkably in this straight valley, down which we travelled for a day and a half, {209} that we were compelled to cross the said river not less than forty times, with the water frequently up to our shoulders. So great is its impetuosity, that we were obliged mutually to support ourselves, to prevent being carried away by the current. We marched in our wet clothes during the rest of our sad route. The long soaking, joined to my great fatigue, swelled my limbs. All the nails of my feet came off, and the blood stained my moccasins or Indian shoes. Four times I found my strength gone, and I should certainly have perished in that frightful region, if the courage and strength of my companions had not roused and aided me in my distress.
We saw May-poles all along the old encampments of the Portage. Each traveller who passes there for the first time, selects his own. A young Canadian, with much kindness, dedicated one to me, which was at least one hundred and twenty feet in height, and which reared its
