best known and most used. Perhaps no one of the western portages varied more than this in length, as on the best authority it is asserted that sometimes no portage was necessary, and at others a portage of nine miles was necessary: "The Chicago–Des Plaines route involved a 'carry' of from four to nine miles, according to the season of the year; in a rainy spring season, it might not be over a mile; and during a freshet, a canoe might be paddled over the entire route, without any portage."[1] When Marquette reached the Des Plaines, known as "Portage River" because it offered a pathway to the Illinois, he was compelled to make a portage of only "half a league."[2] The course of this portage is practically the present route of the famous Drainage Canal which joins the Chicago River with the Des Plaines at Elgin, Illinois.
The most westernly portage from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi was of the greatest importance in the earliest years of
