Between Frog
and Methy portages (480 m.) it formed part of the old _voyageur_ route
to the Peace, Athabasca, and Mackenzie. It is still navigated by canoes,
but has many rapids. Its principal affluent, the Reindeer, discharges
the waters of Reindeer Lake (1150 ft. above the sea, with an area of
2490 sq. m.) and Wollaston Lake (altitude, 1300 ft). The Churchill is
925 m. long. Fort Churchill, at its mouth, is the best harbour in the
southern portion of Hudson's Bay. The portage of La Loche (or Methy),
121/2 m. in length, connects its head waters with the Clearwater river, a
tributary of the Athabasca, draining into the Arctic Ocean.

CHURCHING OF WOMEN, the Christian ceremony of thanksgiving on the part
of mothers shortly after the birth of their children. It no doubt
originated in the Mosaic regulation as to purification (Lev. xii. 6). In
ancient times the ceremony was usual but not obligatory in England. In
the Greek and Roman Catholic Churches to-day it is imperative. The
custom is first mentioned in the pseudo-Nicene Arabic canons. No ancient
form of service exists, and that which figures in the English
prayer-book of to-day dates only from the middle ages. Custom differs,
but the usual date of churching was the fortieth day after confinement,
in accordance with the Biblical date of the presentment of the Virgin
Mary and the Child Jesus at the Temple. It was formerly regarded as
unlucky for a woman to leave her house to go out at all after
confinement till she went to be churched. It was not unusual for the
churching service to be said in private houses. In Herefordshire it was
not considered proper for the husband to appear in church at the
service, or at all events in the same pew. In some parishes there was a
special pew known as "the churching seat." The words in the rubric
requiring the woman to come "decently apparelled" refer to the times
when it was thought unbecoming for a woman to come to the service with
the elaborate head-dress then the fashion. A veil was usually worn, and
in some parishes this was provided by the church, for an inventory of
goods belonging to St Benet's, Gracechurch Street, in 1560, includes "A
churching cloth, fringed, white damask."

The "convenient place," which, according to the rubric, the woman must
occupy, was in pre-Reformation times the church-door. In the first
prayer-book of Edward VI., she was to be "nigh unto the quire door." In
the second of his books, she was to be