g Smith's Landing behind. On the left lay the dangerous and
treacherous falls of the Priest Rapids, so called by reason of the
loss there of a Catholic priest and a companion years ago. The boats,
however, were rowed in slack water across above these big falls, then
took two fast chutes upon the farther side. After this smart water the
commodore of the little fleet pulled in to portage the Cassette Falls,
that tremendous cascade of the Slave River which so terrifies the
ordinary observer when first he sees its enormous display of power.
There are perhaps few more terrifying spectacles of wild water, even
including the Whirlpool Rapids at Niagara.

That night our party lay in bivouac, and were up early in the work of
the portage. All the goods had to be unloaded and all the scows were
hauled up the steep bank by means of a block and tackle. Once up the
bank, the team, which had been brought along in one of the scows and
forced to climb up the bank, were hitched to a long rope, and with the
aid also of men tugging at the ropes they rapidly hauled the boat over
the high and rocky ground which made the portage--a distance of some
four hundred yards in all.

It was about four o'clock that afternoon when the boats had finished
this first portage and had been again loaded below the sharp drop at
the farther end.

The boys continually hung about the men in this curious and
interesting work, and plied Belcore with many questions. He explained
to them that the Cassette Falls are on one of four or five different
channels into which the Slave River breaks hereabouts. Many of these
chutes could not be run at all, nor could a boat be lined down through
them by any possibility. In spite of all this, as he explained, one or
two boats of ignorant prospectors actually had found their way down
the rapids of the Slave, preserved by Providence, as Belcore piously
affirmed.

After the Cassette Portage there came a curve in the rapid run of
water where a canoe hardly could have lived, as the boys thought, then
five miles of very slow water where all the men had to row, the Slave
River being nothing if not freakish in its methods hereabouts. At
times far to the left, through the many tree-covered islands, the
boys could see the fast channel of the Slave River proper, a
tremendous flood pouring steadily northward to the Arctic Sea.

Belcore said the drop of the Slave was two hundred feet in the entire
length of the portage, but the govern