humble libraries here, too. It was while wintering on the Chicago portage that Marquette wrote memoirs of his voyages.
In some instances, too, peculiar relics of the old life in the heyday of the canoe have come down to us. The end of the portage path, besides being a camping spot, was the provisioning place. Here food was to be made or to be secured and properly seasoned and packed. At the old French portages stone ovens were erected, in which quantities of bread might be baked before starting on a journey. At either end of the Chautauqua portage between Lake Erie and Lake Chautauqua such little monuments have been discovered. In each case the baking place was a circular piece of masonry of stone laid in strong mortar, three feet in height and three or four feet in diameter.[1]
The portages between many waters crossed important transverse watersheds along which coursed the great landward routes of primeval America. Here at the junction of the greater and lesser paths were
- ↑ Sir William Johnson's Journal, October 1, 1761; cf. Severance's Old Trails of the Niagara Frontier, p. 40.
