Ten portages have to be faced and overcome as the brigade
ascends the rapid Jack Tent River, covering a stretch of seventy miles.
The party now find themselves on the surface of Knee Lake, a
considerable sheet of water, but a comparative rest after the trials of
Jack Tent River. The lake is fifty-six miles long and at times widens to
ten miles across.
But there is trouble just ahead.
The travellers have now come to the celebrated Fall Portage. It is short
but deterrent. The height and ruggedness of the rocks over which cargo
and boats have to be dragged are unusually forbidding. The only
consolation to the contemplative soul, who does not have to portage, is
that "The stream is turbulent and unfriendly in the extreme, but in
romantic variety, and in natural beauty nothing can exceed this
picture." High rocks are seen, beetling over the rapids like towers, and
are rent into the most diversified forms, gay with various colored
masses, or shaded by overhanging hills--now there is a tranquil pool
lying like a sheet of silver--now the dash and foam of a cataract--these
are but parts of this picturesque and striking scene.
But Fall Portage was only a culmination, in this fiercely rushing Trout
River, for above it a dozen rapids are to be passed with toilsome
energy.
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