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, we crossed five miles to the mouth of the river and at four P.M. left the main branch of it and entered a little rivulet called the Grassy River, running through an extensive reedy swamp.  It is the nest of innumerable ducks which rear their young among the long rushes in security from beasts of prey.  At sunset we encamped on the banks of the main branch.

At three A.M.  June 28th we embarked in a thick fog occasioned by a fall of the temperature of the air ten degrees below that of the water.  Having crossed Knee Lake which is nine miles in length and a portage at its western extremity we entered Primeau Lake with a strong and favourable wind, by the aid of which we ran nineteen miles through it and encamped at the river’s mouth.  It is shaped like the barb of an arrow with the point towards the north and its greatest breadth is about four miles.