{32} eaters' or _mangeurs de lard_, who had nothing worse to
face than well-known rapids. The others were a finer breed, the true
and daring coureurs de bois, or pioneers of the bush, who went west in
comparatively light canoes, each carrying not more than a ton and a
half, who hunted their own game, risked a fight with the Indians, and
were to the duller 'pork eaters' what a charger is to a cart-horse or a
frigate to a barge. The regulation portage load was one hundred and
fifty pounds, and many a man was known to carry this weight the whole
ten miles and back within six hours.

There was need to hurry. Supplies were going west to Lake Winnipeg, up
the Saskatchewan, and even on to Athabaska; while furs were coming down
for the autumn trade to Europe. As a rule the traders were Scottish
and the voyageurs French Canadian. Indians and half-breeds were fairly
common; they manned the canoes in the farther wilds, guided the
pioneers, and did the actual trapping. To speak in terms of modern
transportation: the Indians and their bark canoes produced the raw
material and worked the branch lines; while the voyageurs met them at
the junctions and took the goods down to {33} the head of ocean
navigation, where everything was, of course, trans-shipped for Europe.
The same sort of trade was carried on, in a slightly different way, in
the Maritime Provinces. There are survivals of it still in Labrador.
At the end of July, Nascaupees, some of whom take months to reach their
hunting grounds by paddle and portage, may be seen at Seven Islands, on
the north shore of the Gulf of St Lawrence, where huge modern pulp
mills make paper for the New York press, and where the offing is alive
with transatlantic shipping all season through.

These inland voyages are as strange to the average Canadian of to-day
as to contemporary Englishmen and Frenchmen. So it is perhaps worth
while to record the ordinary features of what must soon become
altogether a thing of the past. The incidents would be much the same
with every kind of small craft that has served its turn along the
interlocking network of Canadian waterways, whether an old-fashioned
bateau or a Durham boat, a sharp-end dug-out, or a bark canoe. But the
immemorial birch-bark is the best to choose for example, as it preceded
and outlasted every other kind and is the most typically Canadian of
them all.

{34}

Before starting, every broken seam and hole must be gummed over. Water