its tribute from progress.  This was the prelude to a still more amazing transformation, for the day soon came, though not in our hero’s time, when the drumming of the partridge was silenced by the choo-choo of the locomotive as it shrieked through forest and beaver-meadow on its way to vaster tracks, further and further west, disclosing and leaving in its trail an empire of undreamed-of fertility.  Then the redman, disturbed in his solitudes, was confronted with civilization, and had to accept the terms of conquest or seek another sanctuary in the greater wilderness beyond.

The navigation of the lakes and rivers at this time was limited to three types of vessel, the “snow,” a three-master with a try-sail abaft the mainmast, the schooner, the batteau and the birch canoe, and, in closely land-locked waters, the horse ferry.  The Durham boat, a batteau on a larger scale with false keel, had yet to be introduced.  The bark canoe, which for certain purposes has never been improved upon—­not even excepting the cedar-built canoe—­varied in size from nine to thirty feet, or, in the language of the voyageur, from one and a half to five fathoms.  These canoes had capacity for a crew of from one to thirty men, or a cargo of seventy “pieces” of ninety pounds each, equal to three tons, exclusive of provisions for nine paddlers.  In these arks of safety, manned by Indians or metis (half-breeds), the fur-trader would leave Lachine, on the St. Lawrence, ascend the Ottawa, descend the French, cross Lake Huron—­the Lake Orleans of Nicollet and Hennepin—­and find no rest from drench or riffle until he reached Mackinaw, or more distant Fort Dearborn (now Chicago), on the Skunk River, at the head of Lake Michigan, 1,450 miles by water from Quebec.

The batteaux—­great, open, flat-bottomed boats, forty feet long and eight feet beam, pointed at stem and stern—­were not unlike the York boats used in Lord Wolseley’s Red River expedition in 1870, and would carry five tons of cargo.  Rigged with a movable mast stepped almost amid-ships, and a big lug-sail, these greyhounds of the lakes were, for passengers in our hero’s time, often the only means of water transport between Quebec and Little York.  As important factors in the transport of soldiers and munitions in the war of 1812, they deserve description.

While sailing well when before the wind, they yet, with their defective rig and keelless bottoms, carrying no weather helm, made little headway with the wind close abeam.  On one occasion Isaac Brock left Lachine with a brigade of five batteaux, so that all hands could unite in making the portages.  At the Cascades, the Milles Roches and the Cedars, three-quarters of the cargo had to be portaged by the packmen.  At times these lightened boats were poled or tracked through the broken water, towed by the men, from such foothold as the rocky banks afforded, by means of a long lariat tied to the boat’s bow, with loops over each trackman’s shoulder, one man steering