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.
