[Grand River] The river party was made up of Austin Cary in charge, and W.R.  Smith, ’90, occupying one boat, and Dennis Cole and E.B.  Young, ’92, with the other, all strong, rugged fellows, more or less acquainted with boating in rapid water, and well equipped for all emergencies.  Their outfit included provisions for five weeks, flour, meal, buckwheat flour, rice, coffee, tea, sugar, beef extract, tins of pea soup, beef tongue, and preserves.  They were provided with revolvers, a shot gun and a rifle, and sufficient ammunition, intending to eke out the stores with whatever game came in their way, although the amount of time given them would not allow much hunting.  All the supplies, including the surveying, measuring and meteorological instruments, were either in tins or in water-tight wrappings, while the bedding and clothing were protected by rubber blankets.  The boats, made by Rushton, the Adirondack boat-builder, were of cedar, fifteen feet long, five feet wide, double-ended, and weighed eighty pounds apiece.  A short deck at each end of the boats covered copper air-tanks, which made life-boats of them and added much to their safety.  Each boat was equipped with a pair of oars, a paddle and about one hundred feet of small line for tracking purposes.  Proceeding about three miles the first camp was made on the south shore of Goose Bay, amid an abundance of mosquitoes.  The next day twenty-five miles were made through shoals that nearly close the river’s mouth, leaving but one good channel through which the water flows very swiftly, by the house of Joe Michelin, the trapper, at which six weeks later two very gaunt and much used up men were most hospitably received.  Here another night was spent almost without sleep, owing to the mosquitoes.

Tuesday a large Indian camp was passed, the big “pool,” at the foot of the first falls and some three miles long, rowed across, and at noon the carry was begun.  It was necessary to make seventeen trips and four and one half hours were used in the task.  When the last load had been deposited at the upper end of the carry, the men threw themselves down on the bank utterly weary, and owing to the loss of sleep the two previous nights, were soon all sound asleep.  In consequence camp was made here, and the first comfortable night of the trip passed.  Including the carry eight miles was the day’s advance.

The twenty-five miles of the next day were made rowing and tracking up the Porcupine rapids through a series of small lakes, one with a little island in the centre deceiving our boys for awhile into thinking they had reached Gull Island Lake, and then up another short rapid at the head of which the party encamped.