. Pathfinders of the West; being the thrilling story of the adventures of the men who discovered the great Northwest. I Each man landed with pack on his back, and trotted away over portages. and from Lake Nipissing to Lake Huron. Thechange was a welcome relief The canoes now rodewith the current; and when a wind sprang up astern, 200 PATHFINDERS OF THE WEST blanket sails were hoisted that let the boatmen lie back,paddles athwart. Going with the stream, the voya-geurs would run — ^^sauter les rapides — the„a safest of the cata- racts. Bowman,not steersman, wasthe pilot of suchruns. A faint,far
. Pathfinders of the West; being the thrilling story of the adventures of the men who discovered the great Northwest. I Each man landed with pack on his back, and trotted away over portages. and from Lake Nipissing to Lake Huron. Thechange was a welcome relief The canoes now rodewith the current; and when a wind sprang up astern, 200 PATHFINDERS OF THE WEST blanket sails were hoisted that let the boatmen lie back,paddles athwart. Going with the stream, the voya-geurs would run — ^^sauter les rapides — the„a safest of the cata- racts. Bowman,not steersman, wasthe pilot of suchruns. A faint,far swish as ofnight wind, littleforward leaps andswirls of the cur-rent, the blur oftrees on eitherbank, were signs tothe bowman. Herose in his thrust of thesteel-shod pole ata rock in mid-stream — the rockraced past; a throbof the keel to thelive waters below— the bowman crouches back, lightening the prowjust as a rider lifts his horse to the leap ; a suddensplash — the thing has happened — the canoe has runthe rapids or shot the A Cree Indian of the Minnesota Borderlands. SEARCH FOR THE WESTERN SEA 201 Pause was made at Lake Huron for favorableweather; and a rear wind would carry the canoes at abouncing pace clear across to Michilimackinac, at themouth of Lake Michigan. This was the chief fur postof the lakes at that time. All the boats bound east orwest, Sioux and Cree and Iroquois and Fox, tradersand priests and outlaws—stopped at and brandy and religion were the characteristicsof the fort. This was familiar ground to De la Verendrye. Itwas at the lonely fur post of Nepigon, north ofMichilimackinac, in the midst of a wilderness forest,that he had eaten his heart out with baffled ambitionfrom 1728 to 1730, when he descended to Montreal tolay before M. de Beauharnois, the governor, plans forthe discovery of the Western Sea. Born at ThreeRivers in 1686, where the passion for discoverv andRadissons fame were in the very air and
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