rning of the 23rd, as we were about to embark, we
encountered the last brigades of canoes belonging to both the Companies
and obtained a guide and foreman from them. Thus completely equipped we
entered the Black Bear Island Lake, the navigation of which requires a
very experienced pilot. Its length is twenty-two miles and its breadth
varies from three to five, yet it is so choked with islands that no
channel is to be found through it exceeding a mile in breadth. At sunset
we landed and encamped on an island, and at six A.M. on the 24th left the
lake and crossed three portages into another which has probably several
communications with the last, as that by which we passed is too narrow to
convey the whole body of the Missinippi. At one of these portages called
the Pin Portage is a rapid about ten yards in length with a descent of
ten or twelve feet and beset with rocks. Light canoes sometimes venture
down this fatal gulf to avoid the portage, unappalled by the warning
crosses which overhang the brink, the mournful records of former
failures.

The Hudson's Bay Company's people whom we passed on the 23rd going to the
rock house with their furs were badly provided with food, of which we saw
distressing proofs at every portage behind them. They had stripped the
birch trees of their rind to procure the soft pulpy vessels in contact
with the wood which are sweet but very insufficient to satisfy a craving
appetite.

The lake to the westward of the Pin Portage is called Sandfly Lake; it is
seven miles long and a wide channel connects it with the Serpent Lake,
the extent of which to the southward we could not discern. There is
nothing remarkable in this chain of lakes except their shapes, being
rocky basins filled by the waters of the Missinippi, insulating the massy
eminences and meandering with almost imperceptible current between them.
From the Serpent to the Sandy Lake it is again confined in a narrow space
by the approach of its winding banks, and on the 26th we were some hours
employed in traversing a series of shallow rapids where it was necessary
to lighten the canoes. Having missed the path through the woods we walked
two miles in the water upon sharp stones, from which some of us were
incessantly slipping into deep holes and floundering in vain for footing
at the bottom, a scene highly diverting notwithstanding our fatigue. We
were detained in Sandy Lake till one P.M. by a strong gale when, the wind
becoming moderate,