There was a short lift over a direct drop of four or five feet, and two portages of about half a mile past heavy rapids, at the second of which the river drops fifty feet to flow between high, sandy banks, the hills on either side standing back from the river, their broken faces red with a coating of iron rust.  The intervening spaces were strewn with boulders of unusual size.

Fresh caribou tracks, the only ones seen since leaving the head of Long Lake, were found on the first portage, and on the second I gathered my first moss berries.  A heavy shower passed late in the afternoon and the sky remained overcast; but we were not delayed, and towards evening arrived at the point, twenty miles below Thousand Island Expansion, where a large tributary comes in from the west, and the George River turns abruptly northward among the higher hills.

The proposal to go into camp had already been made when George discovered some ptarmigan high up the bank.  There was a brisk hunt and eleven were taken.  So again we supped on ptarmigan that night.  I took mine in my tent on account of the mosquitoes, which were so thick that, as George expressed it, it was like walking in a snowstorm to move about outside.

CHAPTER XVI

THE BARREN GROUND PEOPLE

On Sunday morning, August 20th, I awoke in a state of expectancy.  We had slept three times since leaving the Montagnais camp, and unless the Barren Grounds People were not now in their accustomed camping place, we ought to see them before night.  Many thoughts came of how greatly Mr. Hubbard had wished to see them, and what a privilege he would have thought it to be able to visit them.

It seemed this morning as if something unusual must happen.  It was as if we were coming into a hidden country.  From where the river turned into the hills it flowed for more than a mile northward through what was like a great magnificent corridor, leading to something larger beyond.

When Joe and Gilbert, who were usually the first to get off, slipped away down the river, I realized how swift flowing the water must be.  It looked still as glass and very dark, almost black.  The quiet surface was disturbed only by the jumping of the fish.  We saw the canoe push off and turned to put a few last touches to the loading of our own.  When we looked again they were already far away.  Soon, however, we had caught them up and together the two canoes ran out into the widening of the river.  Here it bent a little to the northeast, but two miles farther on it again bore away to the north.  In the distance we could see the mountain tops standing far apart and knew that there, between them, a lake must lie.  Could it be Indian House Lake, the Mush-au-wau-ni-pi, or “Barren Grounds Water,” of the Indians?  We were still farther south than it was placed on the map I carried.  Yet we had passed the full number of lakes given in the map above this water.  Even so I did not believe it could be the big lake I had been looking forward to reaching so eagerly.