"Portage" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The portage at this place, between the Mohawk River and Wood Creek (to the northwest), which are about a mile apart, gave the site its Indian name, De-i-wain-sta, "place where canoes are carried from one stream to another," and its earliest English name, "The Great (or Oneida) Carrying Place." ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous
... did not reach Portage la Prairie until the fourth day out. Another week passed before they arrived at Fort Ellice. Heavy rains came on now, and James M'Kay, chief trader at Fort Ellice, opened his doors to the gold-seekers. Harness and carts repaired and more ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... "beyond" at last, and the odoriferous little bedrooms, the bustle of the preparation, the cares of their lives, were behind. Then there was a girding up of the loins, a getting out of tump-lines and canvas packs, and the long portage was begun. ...
— Crooked Trails • Frederic Remington
... my sister and her husband grubstaked me into the Klondike. It was the first gold rush into that region, the early fall rush of 1897. I was twenty-one years old, and in splendid physical condition. I remember, at the end of the twenty-eight-mile portage across Chilcoot from Dyea Beach to Lake Linderman, I was packing up with the Indians and out-packing many an Indian. The last pack into Linderman was three miles. I back-tripped it four times a day, and on each forward trip carried one hundred and fifty pounds. ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... coast to Port Alexander, among which were a chain of lakes extending along the route 150 miles, so that steamers drawing 12 inches of water can navigate a distance of 100 miles further than steamers drawing 4 feet, which latter run on Senas River, and a practicable portage of 40 miles will then reach Fort Alexander. These reports are looked upon at Victoria as important, as, if true, the upper mining districts will be much more accessible than heretofore, being brought almost ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... die a natural death, ascend to the habitations of the gods. And, from Le Gobien, we learn that this very notion is adopted by his islanders—Si on a le malkeur de mourir de mort violente, on a l'enfer pour leur portage. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... reached the British governor, Hamilton, at Detroit, he at once prepared to reconquer the land. He had much greater forces at his command than Clark had; and in the fall of that year he came down to Vincennes by stream and portage, in a great fleet of canoes bearing five hundred fighting men-British regulars, French partizans, and Indians. The Vincennes Creoles refused to fight against the British, and the American officer who had been sent thither by Clark ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... a land portage would always be necessary between the sea and the Zambesi, above the delta, till 1889, when Mr. Rankin discovered the Chinde branch of the delta, so broad and so deep that ocean vessels may ascend it and exchange freight with the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... "whoever goes need not go further than the Pine Portage. The party on foot will have found out, before the canoes reach that, whether Dan has got clear off, and they can rejoin the canoes at the Portage. So, Fergus, I'll join your party ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... in, to distribute recompense, and to enforce the simple law. Attached to this room on the south was the great store-room, packed with those articles of merchandise most likely to seem of worth in savage eyes and brought, with such infinite labour by canoe and portage, from those favoured lower points whose waters admitted the yearly ships—namely, rifles and ammunition, knives of all sorts, bolts of bright cloth and beads of the colour of the rainbow, great iron kettles such as might hang most fittingly above an open fire, and bright woven ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... trains began to be used on land, so canoes, boats, sailing ships, and steamers began to be used on water. Anybody can prove the truth of the rule for himself by seeing how much easier it is to paddle a hundred pounds ten miles in a canoe than to carry the same weight one mile over a portage. ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... plan was to ascend and explore the lower Beaver River to the point where Hubbard discovered it, and where, in 1903, we abandoned our canoe to re-cross to the Susan River Valley a few days before his death. Here it was our expectation to follow the old Hubbard portage trail to Goose Creek and thence down Goose ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... The excuse was the state of the river, by which they were to make the headwaters. The ice was still flowing northward, but in ever lessening bulk, and the time was filled in with repairs to the canoes which had suffered during the long portage of the trail. ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... Duff, right on that point. Good wood, good landing. Besides there's a deuce of a portage beyond, which we can do after supper to-night. How do you feel, Barry?" asked Knight. ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... pencil and paper, and lists of grub and duffel, and estimates of routes and expenses, and correspondence with men who spell queerly, bear down heavily with blunt pencils, and agree to be at Black Beaver Portage on a certain date. Now, though the February snow and sleet still shut him in, the spring has draw very near. He can feel the warmth of her breath ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... staunch battalion of Berry lay near the foot of Lake George, but the greater part of the army under the direct command of Montcalm was in camp near a saw mill. The valiant Bourlamaque was at the head of the portage, and another force held the point of embarkation on Lake George. But he knew that Montcalm would change these dispositions when the day of ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... was yet young when we passed from the lake into one of its many outlets. This was a narrow stream, navigable at first, but quickly becoming too shallow and rocky for our further progress. So we left the water, and there was now a portage of two miles over a level stretch of forest, at the end of which we would strike the Churchill River at a point twenty miles above ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... real job was an ascent of Erebus, the active volcano which rose from our doors to some 13,400 feet in height. A party of Shackleton's men under Professor David went up it in March, and managed to haul a sledge up to 5800 feet, from which point they had to portage their gear. A year before this Debenham, with the help of a telescope, selected a route by which they could haul a sledge up to 9000 feet. There proved to be no great difficulty about it; it was just a matter of legs ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... I made a moonlight flitting, a thing never dignified, but in my case unusually easy. As I had scarce a pair of boots worth portage, I deserted the whole of my effects without a pang. Dijon fell heir to Joan of Arc, the Standard Bearer, and the Musketeers. He was present when I bought and frugally stocked my new portmanteau; and it was at the door of the trunk ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... Lakes. Prosperous cities—Buffalo, Lockport, Rochester, Syracuse, Utica, Schenectady—sprang up all along the route. Cost of transport from Buffalo to New York was cut in four. The success of New York led Pennsylvania to build canals through the state to Pittsburg, with a portage railroad over the Alleghanies, while in the west canals were dug to connect Lake Erie with the Ohio, and Lake Michigan with the ...
— The Railway Builders - A Chronicle of Overland Highways • Oscar D. Skelton
... number of portages and lakes shut up by ice through a long season. The commerce on that line could bear no competition with that of the Missouri, traversing a moderate climate, offering, according to the best accounts, a continued navigation from its source, and possibly with a single portage from the Western Ocean, and finding to the Atlantic a choice of channels through the Illinois or Wabash, the Lakes and Hudson, through the Ohio and Susquehanna, or Potomac or James rivers, and through the Tennessee and Savannah rivers. An intelligent officer, with ten ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 1: Thomas Jefferson • Edited by James D. Richardson
... appointed by M. Talon, the Intendant of New France. Marquette was well acquainted with the Canadas, and had great influence with the Indian tribes. They conducted an expedition through the lakes, up Green bay and Fox river, to the Portage, where it approaches the Wisconsin, to which they passed, and descended that river to the Mississippi, which they reached the 17th of June, 1673. They found a river much larger and deeper than it had been represented by the Indians. Their regular ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... Major Robert Rogers visited Detroit in 1760, one of the French forts first occupied was Miami, situated on the Maumee river, at the commencement of the portage to the Wabash, near the spot where Fort Wayne was afterwards built. At the time of the outbreak of the Pontiac War this fort was held by Ensign Robert Holmes and twelve men. Holmes knew that his position was critical. In 1762 he had reported that the Senecas, ...
— The War Chief of the Ottawas - A Chronicle of the Pontiac War: Volume 15 (of 32) in the - series Chronicles of Canada • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... up the marshy and oats-choked Fox River, constantly widening to little lakes and receding to a throat of a channel, brought the explorers to the portage, or carrying place. The canoes then had to be unloaded, and both cargo and boats carried overland to a bend of the Miscousing, which was the Indian name for Wisconsin River. "This portage," says a traveler who afterwards followed that way, ...
— Heroes of the Middle West - The French • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... first led them. Although it was broad at its entrance into the lake the upper portion was divided by marshes into a labyrinth of narrow channels; as they passed up the river, the wild oats grew so thickly in the water that the adventurers appeared to row through fields of corn. After a portage of a mile and a half, they launched their canoes in the Wisconsin River, a tributary of the Mississippi, and the guides left them to find their way into the unknown solitudes of the West. Their voyage down the tributary was easy and prosperous, and at length, to their ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... embarked alone, December 2, 1875, in a cedar duck-boat twelve feet in length, from the head of the Ohio River, at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and followed the Ohio and Mississippi rivers over two thousand miles to New Orleans, where he made a portage through that city eastwardly to Lake Pontchartrain, and rowed along the shores of the Gulf of Mexico six or seven hundred miles, to Cedar Keys, Florida, the terminus of ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... of the Loyalists coasted along the eastern shore of Lake Ontario to Kingston, and thence up the Bay of Quinte; others went westward along the south shore of the lake to Niagara and Queenston. Some conveyed their boats over the portage of ten or twelve miles to Chippewa, thence up the river and into Lake Erie, settling chiefly in what was called "Long Point Country," ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... of Portage Dernier drove up to the log-cabin office and shook himself from his blankets; his soutane was rolled up around his waist and secured with safety-pins; his solid legs were encased in the heaviest of woollen trousers and innumerable long stockings. His appearance was singularly divided—clerical ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... 169. By the way, boys, the Indian with the big load on his back is my old friend Bow-Arrow, formerly chief of the Montainais, and the load on his back was sketched from the real one he carried up that ladder portage. This old man was then sixty years of age. But all this talk is for the purpose of telling you the use of the notched log. Our pioneer ancestors used them to ascend to the loft over their cabins where they slept ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... in the afternoon when they commenced their preparations for making this extraordinary portage. Sunk as they were twenty-five hundred feet in the bowels of the earth, the sun had already set for them; but they were still favored with a sort of twilight radiance, and they could count upon it for a couple of hours longer. Carefully ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... portage at Muskrat Falls is th' first," answered Bob, adding uncertainly: "I'm 'feared you'll find th' work on th' river wearisome, not bein' used t' un—th' portagin' an' trackin'. I finds ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... discharging into Hutton Inlet (which I named Portage Creek, from the fact that in former times when the natives were much more numerous, they sometimes carried their canoes across the island to Bobson Inlet), there was a stone dam, evidently built for salmon traps. We also saw where bear had eaten ...
— Official report of the exploration of the Queen Charlotte Islands - for the government of British Columbia • Newton H. Chittenden
... tonnes; but wee are to passe over the breste of the maine ocean, and to lye at sea a moneth or six weekes together, whereby wee shall be constrayned of our selves, withoute chardginge of the Prince, to builde greate shippes, as well to avoide the daunger of tempest as also for the commoditie of portage, whereunto the greater shippes in longe voyadges are moste conveniente, which the Portingales and Spaniardes have founde oute by longe experience, whoe for that cause builde shippes of v. vj. vij. viij. C. and a M. tonnes, to sende into ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... other magnificent lakes, but not one of them bearing any marks of former civilization, as on the shores of the first one which had sheltered us. We left the river two hundred and forty miles from where we had commenced our navigation, and, carrying our canoe over a portage of three miles, we launched it again upon one of the tributaries of the Buona Ventura, two hundred miles north-east ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... obliterated it. Rain had been falling all the morning and the bushes were wetter than water. On such a carry travel is slow. We had three trips to make each way before we could get the stuff and the canoes over. Then a short voyage across the lake, and another mile of the same sort of portage, after which we came out with the last load, an hour before sundown, on the shore of the Big Sabeo. This lake was quite different from the others; wide and open, with smooth sand-beaches all around it. The little hills which ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... so much fun. I hadn't thought, before, we had one thing more than we needed, but now it seemed as if we had a thousand. Sara, it took us four hours to make that portage, and my back hasn't got over ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... teepees at the Forks, and ascended the Assiniboine. It was a very dry year, and the water in the Assiniboine was so low that it was with difficulty he managed to pull over the St. James rapids, and reached where Portage la Prairie now stands, and sixty miles from the site of Winnipeg claimed the country for his Royal Master. Here he collected the Indians, made them his friends, and proceeded to build a great fort, and named it after Mary of ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... possess as to this, or any other matters about which the white men asked; but, watchful of their movements, and seeing from their explorations their intentions, they became convinced of the sincerity of their inquiries, and readily pointed out the portage dividing the waters of Chicago Creek and those ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... of mine own elect. The "translating" was completed in Ohio, and the manuscript, according to Smith, "was sealed up, no more to be opened till it arrived in Zion."* This work was at first kept as a great secret, and Smith and Rigdon moved to the house of a resident of Hiram township, Portage County, Ohio, thirty miles from Kirtland, in September, 1831, to carry it on; but the secret soon got out. The preface to the edition of the book published at Plano, Illinois, in 1867, under the title, "The Holy Scriptures ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... have a change. Through some subconscious inspiration he took Dr. Winton with him. They spent two weeks hunting and fishing in the Maine woods. John sought to get in touch with the man behind the doctor. The doctor soon realized the manliness of his companion. They were resting after a taxing portage, both feeling the fine exhilaration of perfect physical relaxation after productive physical weariness. The two men were pretty close. Shop had not been mentioned during the ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... very likely arouse the spirit of the savages, yet rumors of Indian outbreak are always on the lips of the settlers. Burns himself was upon his return westward, and did not seem greatly troubled lest he fail to get through. He claimed to live at Chicagou Portage, wherever that may be. I only know ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... thousand-pound outfits of thousands of men. This immense mass of luggage and food, flung ashore in mountains by the steamers, was beginning slowly to dribble up the Dyea Valley and across Chilkoot. It was a portage of twenty-eight miles, and could be accomplished only on the backs of men. Despite the fact that the Indian packers had jumped the freight from eight cents a pound to forty, they were swamped with the work, and it was plain that winter would catch the major portion of the outfits ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... was a hundred and forty miles from the Hudson's Bay Company's post of Cumberland House to Prince Albert as the crow would fly, but Keith did not travel a homing line. Only now and then did he take advantage of a portage trail. Clinging to the river, his journey was lengthened by some sixty miles. Now that the hour for which Conniston had prepared him was so close at hand, he felt the need of this mighty, tongueless friend that had ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood
... until Mary and Mrs. Cafferty's lodger met. As he came in by the hall door one day Mary was carrying upstairs a large water bucket, the portage of which two or three times a day is so heavy a strain on the dweller in tenements. The youth instantly seized the bucket and, despite her protestations and appeals, he carried it upstairs. He walked a few steps in advance of Mary, whistling cheerfully as he went, so she was able to ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... nothing so becomes a man, As modest stillness, and humility: But when the blast of war blows in our ears, Then imitate the action of the tiger; Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, Disguise fair nature with hard-favored rage: Then lend the eye a terrible aspect; Let it pry through the portage of the head, Like the brass cannon; let the brow o'erwhelm it, As fearfully as doth a galled rock O'erhang and jutty his confounded base, Swilled with the wild and wasteful ocean. Now set the teeth, and stretch ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... then, and by dark they all had the satisfaction of feeling that fully five hundred yards of the long portage had been got over, and, as Oliver said, there was no reason whatever why they should not get on quite as ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... country you want to see, and that was enough for me; but I've a notion that it goes up to the nor'-west, winding and twisting about till it runs in one spot pootty nigh to the big river we left, so that we can perhaps go up some side stream, drag the boat across a portage, and launch her for our back journey over the same ground or water as ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... five in the morning we commenced tracking and soon came to a ridge of rock which extended across the stream. From this place the boat was dragged up several narrow rocky channels until we came to the Rock Portage where the stream, pent in by a range of small islands, forms several cascades. In ascending the river the boats with their cargoes are carried over one of the islands, but in the descent they are ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... approaches two thousand feet in height, lifting its forest sides in constant view for more than two hundred miles. Leaving Marquette and the iron range at 7 A.M., on the 3d of August, we sailed for Portage, the first harbor in the ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... W. Gilbert, of Williams College, proceeded to Venezuela, and after exploring the vicinity of Lake Valencia, the two former traversed the Ilanos to Pao, descended the Apure and ascended the Orinoco to Yavita, crossed the portage of Pimichin (a low, level tract, nine miles wide, separating the waters of the Orinoco from those of the Amazon), and descended the Negro to Manaos, making a voyage by canoe of over 2000 miles through a little-known but deeply-interesting ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... later Fisette was summoned. He went in, treading lightly on the balls of his feet, and leaning forward as though under a load on a portage. Clark's office always frightened him a little. The rumble of the adjoining power house, the great bulk of the buildings just outside, the masses of documents,—all of this spoke of an external power that puzzled and, in a way, worried him. He halted suddenly in front ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... with their sleds, took their departure about two o'clock. Shortly after I followed them. We encamped at the portage between the Mississippi and Leech Lake River. Snow fell ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various
... and hardship on the way." Here he proceeded to represent the difficulties of the journey in pantomime, "so natural," says Father Vimont, "that no actor in France could equal it." He counterfeited the lonely traveller toiling up some rocky portage track, with a load of baggage on his head, now stopping as if half spent, and now tripping against a stone. Next he was in his canoe, vainly trying to urge it against the swift current, looking around in despair on the foaming rapids, ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... away, keeping close to the stream in his search of a fording place, but he failed to find anything that looked easier than the portage he had used before, so he finally decided to go back to that. By the time he reached the former point he was obliged to drop his burden and sink down on ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Alaska - The Gold Diggers of Taku Pass • Frank Gee Patchin
... no doubt that at last it began to mingle with the clearer air and to thin out; in fact, I have good testimony to that effect. And early next morning it was blown by a wind like an ordinary fog-cloud all over Portage Plains. ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... Valley to Lake Pend d'Oreille, and from this lake across the Columbia plain to Lewis or Snake River; down that to its junction with the Columbia; along the Columbia to the Cowlitz, and over the portage to Puget Sound, along its southern extremity, to any ...
— Minnesota; Its Character and Climate • Ledyard Bill
... hees biz-nesse ma frien'—I know dat's all right dere I'll wait till he call "'Poleon" den I will be prepare— An' w'en he fin' me ready, for mak' de longue voyage He guide me t'roo de wood hesef upon ma las' portage. ...
— The Habitant and Other French-Canadian Poems • William Henry Drummond
... again! home again! bend to the oar! Merry is the life of the gay voyageur. The brave, jolly boatman,—he never is afraid When he meets at the portage a red, forest maid, A Huron, or a Cree, or a blooming Chippeway; And he marks his trail with the bois brules. So pull away, boatmen; bend to the oar; Merry is the life of the gay voyageur. Home again! home again! ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... establishment, where they never expected to see us again. Some Indians who had followed us in a canoe, up to the moment when we undertook the passage across the evening before, had followed the southern shore, and making the portage of the isthmus of Tongue Point, had happily arrived at Astoria. These natives, not doubting that we were lost, so reported us to Mr. M'Dougal; accordingly that gentleman was equally overjoyed and astonished at beholding us safely landed, which procured, not only for us, but ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... carried him down to a boat, and lashed him there until morning, letting the rain wash all the combustible matter out of him. That day we reached Oswego Falls, where a party of us were stationed some time, running boats over, and carrying stores across the portage. ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... once settled as a clergyman and president of the college at Hiram, Portage County. He here became very popular as an eloquent divine, as a lecturer before lyceums, and as a profound scholar. The success of his school was without a precedent. Two years ago he was elected, by an ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... of 1673 with five companions in two canoes. Their way was from the Strait of Mackinac to Green Bay in Wisconsin, up the Fox River, across a portage to the Wisconsin River, and down this to the Mississippi, on whose waters they floated and paddled to a place probably below the mouth of the Arkansas. There the travelers stopped, and turned back toward Canada, convinced that the ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... gradually roamed farther and farther from the shanty in search of acorns and roots. One afternoon we heard a rifle-shot, a very noticeable thing, as we had no near neighbors, as yet. We thought it must have been fired by an Indian on the trail that followed the right bank of the Fox River between Portage and Packwaukee Lake and passed our shanty at a distance of about three quarters of a mile. Just a few minutes after that shot was heard, along came the poor mother rushing up to the shanty for protection, with her ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... on the stream was barred by a wall of black rocks, with a single narrow opening, through which its waters rushed furiously down. At this place there is a portage, above which the Niger flows on, restored to its former ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... numbers now take up their abode in houses provided for them by man, providing that English Sparrows are kept away. They make their nests of straws and grasses, lined with feathers, and lay four to six plain white eggs; size .75 x .50. Data.—Portage, Mich., May 26, 1897. Nest in a gate post; hole about 6 ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... like connection existed between the waters of the Tippecanoe and the waters of the Kankakee. These portages were, as General Harrison observes, "much used by the Indians and sometimes by traders." LaSalle passed from Lake Michigan to the waters of the St. Joseph, thence up that river to a portage of three miles in what is now St. Joseph county, Indiana, thence by said portage to the headwaters of the Kankakee, and down that river to the Illinois. At the post of Chicago the traders crossed from Lake Michigan by a very short portage into the headwaters of the Illinois, and ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... hurtling down in shimmering floods at the Chaudiere Falls. The high cliff to the left and countercurrent from the falls swirl the canoes over on the right side to the sandy flats where the lumber piles to-day defile the river. Here boats are once more hauled up for portage—a long portage, nine miles, all the way to the modern town of Aylmer, where the river becomes wide as a lake, Lake Du Chene of the oak forests. Here camp for the night was made, and leaks in the canoes mended with resin, round fires gleaming red as an angry eye across the {51} darkening waters, ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... Eskimo village was reached, and sixty miles of snow trail were left behind. Shaktolik lay on the shore southeast of a portage which would have to be made over a small point of land jutting out into ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... comes to the boys, Mr. Farwell. They just get it and go off to the States, and it's come to me! I've always known it would. You see, I've got to go away; not just now, but some time. I'm going out through the Secret Portage. I'm going away, away to find my real place. I'm going to do something—out where the States are. I hoped you came from there; could tell me—how to go about it. Do you know, I feel as if I had been dropped in Kenmore just to rest ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... River a short distance, they came to the portage, where travelling through the wilderness twenty miles to the Nashwauk, they passed down that stream to its junction with the St. John's River, ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... however, when his views as to price were met. His first care was to get Little Jim out of the way by sending him on an errand to his grandma's; then the Wolf was driven into his box and nailed in. The box was put in a wagon and taken to the open prairie along the Portage trail. ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... was constructed by foreign artizans, principally by Italians, and was launched in 1515. She was said to be of a thousand tons portage—the largest ship in England. The vessel was four-masted, with two round tops on each mast, except the shortest mizen. She had a high forecastle and poop, from which the crew could shoot down upon the deck or waist of another vessel. ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... the Allegheny River above Pittsburgh there are Brady's Bend and East Brady, to remind people of his deeds; near Beaver, Pennsylvania, at the Ohio River below Pittsburgh, there are Brady's Run, Brady's Path and Brady's Hill; in Portage County, northeastern Ohio, over toward the Pennsylvania line, there are Brady's Leap and Brady's Lake. So Captain Samuel Brady left his mark ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... appealed most to the beneficiary, yet it seemed well to me also to have my guests surrounded with mercy and loving kindness. John had but to suggest building a fire or greasing his boots or carrying a canoe over any portage to any lake, and the Lizzie at once leaped with a bright smile as who should say that this was indeed a pleasure. "C'est bien, M'sieur," was his formula. He would gaze at John for sections of an hour, with his ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... river which bore a considerable distance to the north before doubling back to empty into the Jad-in-lul, the ape-man missed a portage that would have ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... young ones. In such case make yourselves a good canoe—a dug-out [Footnote: Log-canoe] will do—and go down the lake till you are stopped by the rapids; [Footnote: Heeley's Falls, on the Trent] make a portage there; but as your craft is too weighty te carry far, e'en leave her and chop out another, and go down to the falls; [Footnote: Crook's Rapids.] then, if you do not like to be at any further trouble, ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... Dog until the arrival of his daughter, Papa Isbister thought fit to tell us the fate of Rainbow Pete, of whose physical deformity and thirst for gold we knew something already. Rainbow Pete had come to Mushrat Portage, playing his flute, at a time when preparations were being made to blast a road-bed through the wilderness for ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... knew what he meant. Fort Gibraltar had been destroyed by Hudson's Bay men. We had no alternative but to strike west along the Assiniboine, on the chance of meeting some Nor'-Westers before reaching the company's quarters at the Portage. That post, too, might be destroyed; but where were Hamilton and Father Holland? Danger, or no danger, I must learn more of the doings in Red River. Also, there were reasons why I wished to visit the settlers of Fort Douglas. We camped on the south side of the Assiniboine a few miles ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... His boat song roused the lurking fox From den beside the Oiseau rock Upward upon the river's breast, The highway to the wild Nor-west, Past the long lake Temiscamingue, Where wild drakes plume their glossy wing, Oft had he urged his light canoe, Hunting the moose and caribou; He knew each portage on the way To the far posts of Hudson's Bay, And even its frozen waters saw, When roaming courier du bois, In the great Company's employ, Which he had entered when a boy. Comely he was, and blithe, and young, Had a light heart and merry ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke
... for trading purposes between Lake Erie and the Ohio river, by cleaning out the channels of the Cuyahoga and Tuscarawas riverspretentiousssage of boats and batteaux; a wagon road, seven miles long, from Old Portage to New Portage, making the connection between the two rivers. It was supposed that twelve thousand dollars would suffice for the purpose, and the Legislature authorized a lottery by which the funds were to be raised. There were to be twelve thousand ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... [595]Verulamium, good ships have formerly come to Exeter, and many such places, whose channels, havens, ports are now barred and rejected. We contemn this benefit of carriage by waters, and are therefore compelled in the inner parts of this island, because portage is so dear, to eat up our commodities ourselves, and live like so many boars in a sty, for ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... we going to hunt the grizzlies, Leo?" inquired Rob, after a time, as they busied themselves making ready for the portage with ...
— The Young Alaskans in the Rockies • Emerson Hough
... Nyoda won the right to take the first paddle in the Keewaydin. They carried the canoe on their heads, portage fashion, around the dam, and launched it up above, where the confined waters had spread out into a wide pond. "Oh, what a joy to dip a paddle again!" sighed Sahwah blissfully, sending the Keewaydin flying through the water with long, vigorous strokes. "I'd love ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... roaring of waters reverberating against the walls of rock. Upon such a warning the boats were landed, and if there was ledge room to walk, the men carried and dragged their vessels around the danger spot. If there was no shelving 5 rock wide enough to permit a portage, the men climbed to a higher ledge and eased the boats over the falls with ropes. Sometimes nothing was left to do but to "shoot" the falls and trust to luck ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... madness to think of descending here, and that a portage was necessary. The contents of the boats were lifted out, and then one of them was carried down over the rocks by the united strength of the party. They had gone half a mile when they came to a spot where they could go no farther, as the water ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... well as in European countries, and scientists have been carefully investigating the cause and the general nature of the maladies, as well as probable methods of prevention and cure. Mr. Geo. Atkinson, a well-known practical naturalist of Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, writes as follows to a local paper on this subject, which I find ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... mill caused them to pull up short. They headed straight for shore, and as they scrambled out at the foot of the hill, and pushed through the bushes, intending to see what the chances were for a portage, they blundered into the two ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... laughed Tom; "that would be a little too much of a good thing. Whenever we come to anything of this sort, we make a portage, as the French boatmen say—carry our canoes round by land, and then launch them again below the fall. There's a snug little path just round the corner, and as soon as we're through with lunch we'll just go down and look ...
— Harper's Young People, October 5, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... acknowledge in this latter connection help received from the collection, "The Indian in his Wigwam." Thanks are also due to Mr. G. H. Dunn, St. Andrew's Locks, Manitoba, for the "Sleep Fairies"; to Mr. C. Linklater, Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, for the "Adventures of Wesakchak"; to Mr. J. S. Logie, Summerland, British Columbia, for "The Chief's Bride"; to the Okanagan chief, Antowyne, for the other Okanagan legends; and to a paper read before the Royal Society ...
— Thirty Indian Legends • Margaret Bemister
... trade geographical advantages lay with the French. They had two excellent routes from Montreal directly into the richest beaver lands of the continent. One of these, by way of the Ottawa and Mattawa rivers, had the drawback of an overland portage, but on the other hand the whole route was reasonably safe from interruption by Iroquois or English attack. The other route, by way of the upper St. Lawrence and the lakes, passed Cataraqui, Niagara, and ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... or even had the name been overlooked once, she could not have escaped it. For Jonas Scobbs was the proprietor of Scobbs' Hotel in Falling Star City; of the Bellevue in Snakefence, of the Palace Hotel in Portage. ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... the train had climbed from the muddy level of Portage Lake, which with its recently cut ship-canals bisects Keweenaw Point, making of its upper end an island, and was speeding northward over a rough upland. Its way led through a naked country of rocks and low-growing scrub, for the primitive ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... are so superstitious, that they would not believe it possible for them to make a prosperous journey without observing this ceremony at this place; for sometimes their enemies (Iroquois) await them at this portage, not venturing to go any farther on account of the difficulty of the journey. Consequently they are occasionally surprised and killed by the Iroquois at this place (the south bank of ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... and in about twenty minutes reached the next canon. Landing on a rocky shore at its commencement, we ascended the ridge to reconnoitre. Portage was out of the question. So far as we could see, the jagged rocks pointed out the course of the canon, on a winding line of seven or eight miles. It was simply a narrow, dark chasm in the rock; and here the perpendicular faces were ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... the Indian village of Pelican Portage, and landed by climbing over huge blocks of ice that were piled along the shore. The adult male inhabitants came down to our camp, so that the village was deserted, except for the children and ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... eggs on the Dyea beach. But it did not take him long to recover his land legs and appetite. His first interview with the Chilkoot packers straightened him up and stiffened his backbone. Forty cents a pound they demanded for the twenty-eight-mile portage, and while he caught his breath and swallowed, the price went up to forty-three. Fifteen husky Indians put the straps on his packs at forty-five, but took them off at an offer of forty-seven from a Skaguay Croesus in dirty shirt and ragged overalls who had lost his horses on the White ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... wide, and I'm tossed aside To rot on a lonely shore, While the leaves and mould like a shroud enfold, For the last of my trails are o'er; But I float in dreams on Northland streams That never again I'll see, As I lie on the marge of the old Portage, With grief ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... westward to Pittsburgh began at once and progressed rapidly. By making use of the Alleghany Portage Railroad from Hollidaysburg, the Pennsylvania Railroad eventually secured a continuous line from Harrisburg to Pittsburgh. But between Philadelphia and Harrisburg passengers were for a long time subjected to many inconveniences. Finally in ...
— The Railroad Builders - A Chronicle of the Welding of the States, Volume 38 in The - Chronicles of America Series • John Moody
... Nyassa" might be the means of putting a check on the slavers across the lake, they hurried on with their work. She was unscrewed at a spot about five hundred yards below the first cataract, and they began to make a road over the portage of forty miles, by which she was to be ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... the rights of the daughter of a pioneer who had helped to make the West; and her pride in him had given a glow to her cheek and a spring to her step which drew every eye. In the chief street of Portage la Drome men would stop their trafficking and women nudge one another when she passed, and wherever she went she stirred interest, excited admiration, or aroused prejudice—but the prejudice did not matter so long as her father, Joel Renton, lived. ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... get me is on the portage between Caribou Lake and the Spirit. They will try to tie up the teams. On my way out I will see Martin Sellers ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... the cabin was the Portage trail referred to in the previous chapter as passing near the Delaware town. This path was much used by all the Indians in traveling between the Great Lakes and the Ohio river, as it was the only stretch of land they must cross in making ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden
... from other tribes, made a sudden and unexpected attack at the Cascades of the Columbia, midway between Vancouver and the Dalles, killed several citizens, women and children, and took possession of the Portage by besieging the settlers in their cabins at the Upper Cascades, and those who sought shelter at the Middle Cascades in the old military block-house, which had been built some years before as a place of refuge under just such circumstances. ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... magnitude and importance when the province becomes populous and flourishing, for it is situated at the commencement of a portage, which never can be evaded by any improvement in the navigation, it being rendered necessary by the falls of Niagara; therefore, all vessels containing goods and stores destined for the western parts of Upper Canada ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... Ida, "we will take it down to the lake. I may want it to-morrow. You will have a difficult portage unless you go down ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... of the shack, Lancaster and his younger daughter were watching the portage, piecemeal, of the troops. But Dallas, starting the team again, saw father and sister suddenly turn from the landing to look and point toward the coulee. Glancing that way, too, she saw the object of their interest. Over the brink into sight ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... labor was necessary in making a portage of the falls. The remaining periogue was abandoned, the canoes only being carried on. To accomplish this, a large cottonwood tree was felled, its trunk being cut into short sections to serve as wheels for improvised carriages; the mast of the periogue, ...
— Lewis and Clark - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark • William R. Lighton
... and gayly they continued, save when the rain poured unpleasantly, or the swarms of Labrador flies attacked them or steep banks or swift rapids made portage difficult. ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... Le Caron. But Champlain was not to be baulked by this circumstance. He immediately started on the track of the larger party, with ten Indians and two Frenchmen, one of whom was his interpreter, Etienne Brule. He went up the Ottawa River, made a portage through the woods, and launched his canoes on the waters of Lake Nipissing, passing through the country of a tribe so sunk in degrading superstitions, that the Jesuits afterward called ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... Lake Harney, whence we determined to make the portage to Indian River. O'Toole was sent to look for some means of moving our boat. He returned next day with two small black bulls yoked to a pair of wheels such as are used by lumbermen. Their owner ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... Missouri at the pine Island Rapid. from thence he bore his Course to the N E untill he Struck Meadcin river near where that river Enters the rocky Mts. and proceeded down Medicine river to the Missouri at the white bear Islands at the upper part of the portage. this rout is a very good one tho not the most derect rout, the most derect rout would be to proceed up the Missouri above Dearborns river and take a right hand road & fall on a South branch of the Cokatlarishkit R. and proceed down that river to the main road but the best rout would be from ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... Minnesota in 1848 and was later purveyor to the Indians. An Indian trail extended from Fond du Lac to St. Paul. It ran from Fond du Lac by trail to Knife Falls, Knife Falls by canoe on St. Louis river to Cloquet, from there to Hoodwood, from there to Sandy Lake, portage from there to Grand Rapids, from Grand Rapids by way of the ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... skiff, by the way of Niagara river, sailing in one day between sun-rise and sun-set (stopping for three hours at Port Colborne) from Grand River to Chippewa, within two miles of the Falls. I had my skiff conveyed on a waggon over the portage from Chippewa to Queenstown (ten miles), and started from Niagara to Toronto about noon of the first Friday in July. When a little more than half way across the lake, I encountered a heavy north-east storm of rain and wind, and a fog so thick ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... overestimate the distances they did—and they did overestimate them, very much. When we were tracking up on the Rat Portage, in the ice water, at the Arctic Circle, don't you remember we figured on double what we had actually done? A man's wife corrected him on how long they had been married. He said it was twenty years, and she said it was ten, by the records. 'Well, it seems longer,' ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... Then, late on a certain afternoon, they reached a point where the bed of the river was obstructed by rapids, and the raft was moored for the night so that the banks might be explored on the morrow for portage facilities. And now it was that the real difficulties of the journey began to reveal themselves; for upon attempting to find a path through the forest, which grew right down to the water's edge on both ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... boat-trucks, Will," said Lewis, when at last they were all encamped at the foot of the falls. "We shall have to portage twenty ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... valley, in a few hours, but it took the French pioneers a whole century and more to make their way out to where those aviators began their flight. We have but a few pages for a journey over a thousand miles of stream and portage and a hundred years of time. I must therefore leave most of the details of suffering from the rigors of the north, starvation, and the Iroquois along the way to your memories, or to your fresh reading of Parkman, ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... himself against the treachery of waterfall and rapid he kept a keen lookout ahead. For a matter of half an hour the water had been growing steadily swifter, and Challoner was satisfied that before very long he would be compelled to make a portage. A little later he heard ahead of him the low and steady murmur which told him he was approaching a danger zone. As he shot around the next bend, hugging fairly close to shore, he saw, four or five hundred yards below ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... glad of a rest, for since entering the rapids the work had been hard and continuous. The Indians would have undertaken all the portage round the various falls and bad rapids, but he insisted on doing his share of the work, and had day after day toiled with heavy weights over a rough country. It was all over now, and the prospect of a week spent at the mission before ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... said Robert, and, Tayoga agreeing with them, they returned the canoe to the stream, paddling back into the lake, and continuing their course until they came to its end. There they carried the canoe across a portage and launched it on a second lake as beautiful as the first. None of the three spoke much now, their minds being filled with thoughts of St. ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... a few days, at that mild summit of land which marks the portage between the east bound and the west bound waters; yet, impelled ever by the eager spirit of the adventurer, they made their pause but short. In time they launched their craft on the bright, smooth flood of the river of the Ouisconsins, stained coppery-red by its far-off, ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... a lively journey. Didn't know I could like roughing-it so well. And it was real roughing-it, pretty much. Oh, not dangerous at all, but rather vigorous. I had to canoe up three hundred miles of a shallow river, with one Indian guide, making a portage every ten miles or so, and we got tipped over in the rapids now and then—the Big Chief almost got drowned once—and we camped at night in the original place where they invented mosquitoes—and one morning I shot ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... trouble was to keep the trail. There was absolutely no path. All the trail, was that made by my two Indians, and Indians are trained to leave as little evidence of their movements as possible. So I was often lost. I would at the beginning of the portage, bravely shoulder my burden and endeavour to keep in sight of my men. This, however, I found to be an utter impossibility. A sharp turn among the rocky ridges, or a plunge into the dense dark forest, and they were gone from my vision. Then my perplexities began. If, ...
— On the Indian Trail - Stories of Missionary Work among Cree and Salteaux Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young |
