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AMERICAN PORTAGES

Mekantique;" thence through "Lake of Me' Kantique de St Augustin" and into the Chaudière.

Perhaps the earliest map showing a road throughout the Kennebec and Chaudière valleys is "A New Map of Nova Scotia & Cape Britain" (1755) in the British Public Records Office.[1] The road bears the name "Kenebec Road."

Among the Haldimand Papers in the British Museum[2] is a most interesting "Journal from the last settlements on the Chaudiere to the first Inhabitants on Kennebec River kept by Hugh Finley, from the 13th of September that he left Quebec until the 30th that he arrived at Falmouth in Casco Bay in the P[r]ovince of the Massachusets Bay—1773." Finley had been appointed "Surveyor of Post roads on the Continent of North America" and, in view of the tedious length and the common retardments of the Lake Champlain route between Canada and New England, determined to explore the Chaudière–Kennebec route. Four Indian guides accompanied

  1. Board of Trade Maps, vol. 24, no. 45.
  2. Add. MSS., 21, 686, pp. 47–54.