But what renders this river inconvenient is the water falls and rapids which extend for the space of forty leagues, to wit from Montreal to the entrance of Lake Ontario, there being only the two lakes just mentioned of easy navigation.

To surmount these torrents, we must often debark from

the canoe and walk in the river whose waters are sufficiently low in these quarters, chiefly towards the banks.

We take the canoe in hand dragging it after us.

ward

bow, the other behind at the stern

at the

of the bark of trees, and as it is not loaded, great resistance.

;

Ordinarily two men suffice, one forand as the canoe is very light, being made merely

more smoothly over the water, not meeting Some times the canoe is to be landed and carried some distance, one man in front, it

glides

FRENCH EXPEDITIONS AGAINST THE MOHAWKS.

the other in the rear ; the first carrying one end of the canoe on the right shoulder, the second carrying the other end on the left.

It becomes necessary to do this either on meeting cascades and entire

rivers which fall some times perpendicularly

from a prodigious height or when the current is too

rapid ; or when the water thereabout being too deep, we cannot walk, dragging the canoe along by or when the country is to be crossed from one river to the other. But when the mouth of the Great Lake is reached, the navigation is easy, when the waters are tranquil, becoming insensibly wider at first then about two-thirds, next one half and finally out of sight (of land) especially after one has passed an infinity of little islands which are at the entrance of the Lake, in such great number and in such a variety that the most experienced Iroquois Pilots sometimes lose themselves there, and experience considerable difficulty in distinguishing the course to be steered, in the confusion and as it were in the labyrinth formed by the islands, which otherwise have nothing agreeable beyond their multitude.