"Portage" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 of the ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... met Ben Kyle by appointment at the foot of the Oxbow portage and he had found Kyle to be particularly malevolent and entirely willing—and Kyle had gone north to the Flagg drive in the ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... last, is 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 rustling through his ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... were 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 ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... 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! bend to the oar! Merry is ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... 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
... its source a smooth, graded highway, upon which a cargo may be transported with much less effort than overland. If obstructions occur in the form of rapids or falls, boat and cargo are carried around them. It is often easy to pass by a short portage or "carry" from one stream system across the divide to another. In regions which are not very level the easiest grades in every direction are found along the streams, and the main routes of land travel follow the stream valleys. In traversing a mountainous region, a railroad follows the ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... Our 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 Creek to ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... half are whitish and opaque, the difference depending upon the class of country through which they have flowed. The dark indicate vegetable decay, while the others point to clayey soil. Twice we came across rapids, and in each case made a portage of half a mile or so to avoid them. The woods on either side were primeval, which are more easily penetrated than woods of the second growth, and we had no great difficulty in carrying our canoes ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... across Moose Jaw, Swift Current, Indian Head, and Portage La Prairie. I forget at which of these it was we saw Indians in all the gaudy finery of their ancestors, with feathers sticking up on their heads, buckskin shirts covered all over with beads and decorated with tassels, in which ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... have a hundred miles to the River Simah, where a Thames steamer could ply at all times of the year; but, again, the space between Simah and Katima-molelo has five or six rapids with cataracts, one of which, Gonye, could not be passed at any time without portage. Between these rapids there are reaches of still, deep water, of several miles in length. Beyond Katima-molelo to the confluence of the Chobe you have nearly a hundred miles again, of a river capable of being navigated in the same way as in the ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... my people or bur friends, but I shall pass from one force to the other, and whenever I can warn the loyal troops, or apprise their people of danger, I shall do it. You Julie I shall leave in the care of my aunt at the Portage; for it is not safe for you, it would not be safe for you and me together, to remain in this deserted cottage alone during ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... officials got out and ran back; we thought some of our luggage had fallen out, but it seems one of the bridges over which we had just passed was rather shaky, and they went to investigate. If we had gone on last night we meant to be detached at Rat Portage, or Lake of the Woods, but now we go on to Winnipeg if, please God, we ...
— The British Association's visit to Montreal, 1884: Letters • Clara Rayleigh
... fell on the package in the ring of light from the shaded lamp. After a moment he lifted it and, drawing up a chair, seated himself and removed the wrapper. It covered a tin box such as he was accustomed to use in the wilderness for the protection and portage of field notes and maps. He raised the lid and took from the top a heavy paper, which he unfolded and spread before him. It was Weatherbee's landscape plan, traced with the skill of a draughtsman and showing plainly the ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... whose flesh is devoured, is doomed to a perpetual fire; while the souls of all who 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
... boating on far Mistassinni. We were fetching the portage above the great rapids, Where they whirled, roaring down, freshet full, at their whitest, When we saw from a rock that stretched outward and over The wild hissing water as it swept on in thunder, A canoe coming down, rolling over and over, With a little papoose ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... until a sudden glimpse of the sluiceway leading under the 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 missing canoes and ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... the return grew heavier as they progressed, and the time came when it was so hard to make headway against the powerful current that the effort was given up. The last few miles became a real portage, though when our friends were descending the river the passage ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... 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 to get over ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... to my aged father, and told him I was going again to some school outside, and if God permitted I hoped to return again to Little Traverse. All my father said was, "Well, my son, if you think it is best, go." And away we went. We overtook the vessel somewhere opposite Little Portage, and as I came aboard the agent's face turned red. He said, "Are you going?" I said, "Yes sir, I am going." So nothing more was said. The greater part of the night was spent by the agent and the captain gambling with cards, by which the agent lost considerable money. ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird
... Dakhesh the tension was only slightly relaxed. The necessity of supplying the large force at Berber, 108 miles from Railhead, still required the maintenance of a huge and complicated system of boat and camel transport. Of course, as the railway advanced, it absorbed stage after stage of river and portage, and the difficulties decreased. But the reader may gain some idea of their magnitude by following the progress of a box of biscuits from Cairo to Berber in the month of December 1897. The route was as follows: From Cairo to Nagh Hamadi (340 miles) ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... to the portage where the man and his wife sat. They asked him why he was so sad. He told them all. One of them was a m'teoulin. He asked of them, "Could you tell your gun if you saw it?" The woman cried quickly, "I could!" He was not pleased at her forwardness, ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... the northern Appalachians diverts some of Canada's trade from the Great Lakes to the Hudson, just as in the seventeenth century it enabled the Dutch at New Amsterdam and later the English at Albany to tap the fur trade of Canada's frozen forests. Formerly a line of stream and portage, it carries now the Erie Canal and New York Central Railroad.[2] Similarly the narrow level belt of land extending from the mouth of the Hudson to the eastern elbow of the lower Delaware, defining the outer margin of the rough hill country of northern New Jersey and the ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... west. War between the nations may 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 it is the ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... congested with 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 on the wrong side ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... reached the prairie land of Manitoba. They were about three months on the way, arriving at Port Garry on the 24th of August. During this time it became necessary for the men to cut trails through brake and bramble, construct corduroy roads, build boats, ascend dangerous rapids, portage stores and supplies over almost insurmountable places, meanwhile fighting mosquitoes and black flies, and encountering countless dangers, all of which they cheerfully performed with their characteristic bravery until the whole expedition was successfully landed ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald
... of the continent, but connected with every other system from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from the Tropics to the Polar sea. Little by little the pioneers found out that they could paddle and portage the same canoe, by inland routes, many thousands of miles to all four points of the compass: eastward to the Atlantic between the Bay of Fundy and New York; westward till, by extraordinary efforts, they passed ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood
... to the French. These two posts, (viz.) Niagara and Sclusser, were of great importance to the British, on the account of affording the means of communication with the posts above, or on the upper lakes. In 1760, a contract was made between Sir William Johnston and a Mr. Stedman, to construct a portage road from Queenston landing to Fort Sclusser, a distance of eight miles, in order to facilitate the transportation of provision, ammunition, &c. from one place to the other. In conformity to this agreement, on the 20th ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... beds of gypsum. Bog iron ore is common on the north-east side of the lake, and is worked. The water communications of these countries are astonishingly easy. Canoes can go from Quebec to Rocky Mountains, to the Arctic Circle, or to the Mexican Gulf, without a portage longer than four miles; and the traveller shall arrive at his journey's end as fresh and as safely as from an English tour of pleasure. It is common for the Erie steam-boat to take goods and passengers from Buffaloe, to Green Bay and Chicago, in Lake Michigan, a distance of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 354, Saturday, January 31, 1829. • Various
... water. Looking about her, she perceived a gutter which seemed even lovelier than the one she had followed. It was deeper and broader and perhaps a little browner, wherefore she launched her ship upon its dimpled bosom and explored it as far as the next sewer-hole or portage. Thus the voyage continued for several blocks with only one accident—which might have happened to anybody. It was an accident in the nature of a fall, caused by the sliding of Jane's left foot on some slippery ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... 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
... together with the Tsetse fly has worked havoc in Africa. The author maintains that this "pack carrying" has caused the death of more than one million Negroes and cites as evidence that in one town the blacks rebelled against this portage service because it was considered better to die than to undergo such a hardship. The book is intended to emphasize the importance of remedying these abuses and suggests as the proper reform that the concessions granted these private companies should be withdrawn ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... their schedule, each day eating into the margin they had run up. There were days when they made fifteen miles, and days when they made a dozen. And there was one bad stretch where in two days they covered nine miles, being compelled to turn their backs three times on the river and to portage sled and ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... 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 ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... 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 their ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... much: for it is the test of good books, as of good pictures, that they improve with acquaintance. I had a little 'Milton' bound with brass corners, that I might carry it always in my waistcoat-pocket—after doing this for twenty years it was all the fresher for its portage. Your invention of the positive process is equally useful and elegant; useful because the reverse method lessens the pleasure of work, elegant because the materials are delicate and ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... o'clock, 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 much higher than in the previous pass, ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... dog trains—Cerf-Vola never gave out—and partake of the tender steak of the wood-buffalo. For many days I had regularly used snow-shoes, and now I seldom sought the respite of the sled, but tramped behind the dogs. Over marsh and frozen river and portage we lagged till, on March 6, a vast lake opened out upon our gaze, on the rising shore of which were the clustered buildings of a large fort, with a red flag flying above them in the cold north blast. The lake was Athabasca, the clustered buildings Fort Chipewyan, and the flag—well, we all ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... people 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 ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... 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 growth of timber had been ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... care for your own safety, for if they do not respect my grey head, neither will they spare your young ones. In such case, make yourselves a good canoe—a dug-out [FN: Log canoe.] will do—and go down the lake till you are stopped by the rapids; [FN: Crook's Rapids.] make a portage there; but as your craft is too weighty to carry far, e'en leave her and chop out another, and go down to the Falls; [FN: Heeley's Falls, on the Trent.] then, if you do not like to be at any further trouble, you may make out your journey to the Bay [FN: Bay ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... resolution of the House of Representatives of the 29th ultimo, the Senate concurring, I return herewith the bill (H.R. 7345) entitled "An act authorizing and directing the Secretary of War to establish new harbor lines in Portage ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... 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 ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... twitched. "I thank you. No other possible landing place or foothold, is there? And it would take a day to go back to Tomlinson's and portage a canoe. Well, we'll go on to the end in a last hope that they ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... not explore the river further, but he ascertained a few days later that the Indians used the river in their journeys to Tadousac, making but a short portage ...
— The Makers of Canada: Champlain • N. E. Dionne
... have solved the difficulty; it is connected with the main (southern) branch of the Chicago river, 5 m. from its mouth, with the Illinois river at La Salle, the head of steamer navigation on the Illinois river, and is the natural successor in the evolution of transportation of the old Chicago portage, 1/2 m. in length, between the Chicago river and the headwaters of the Kankakee; it was so deepened as to draw water out from the lake, whose waters thus flowed toward the Gulf of Mexico. It is about 96 m. long, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... 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-favour'd 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 does a galled rock O'erhang and jutty his confounded base, Swill'd with the wild and wasteful ocean. Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide, Hold hard the breath, and bend up ...
— The Life of King Henry V • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]
... either of these towns. Seventy-five pounds sterling and twenty thousand feet of boards (besides land) are offered on condition it should be fixed in Compton. The arguments used for fixing the school here are—'t is the centre of that province; good and easy portage by land and water to Portsmouth and Newbury; but twenty-seven miles further than ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... down the majestic Columbia is a memory-picture which lasts a life-time. It is eighty-eight miles by rail to Portland, the train skirting the river bank up to within a few miles of the city. By river, it is forty-five miles to the Upper Cascades, then a six-mile portage via narrow-gauge railway, then sixty miles by steamer again to Portland. The boat leaves The Dalles at about 7 in the morning, and reaches Portland at 6 in the evening. The accommodations on these boats are first-class in every ...
— Oregon, Washington and Alaska; Sights and Scenes for the Tourist • E. L. Lomax
... impatience at this delay, by embarking on board of her. But the only steamer in the river St. Mary, above the falls, which is a sort of arm or harbor of Lake Superior, was the Julia Palmer, and she was lying aground in the pebbles and sand of the shore. She had just been dragged over the portage which passes round the falls, where a broad path, with hillocks flattened, and trunks hewn off close to the surface, gave tokens of the vast bulk that had been moved over it. The moment she touched the water, she stuck ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... Montreal capitalists, from La Prairie on the south side of the St. Lawrence as far as St. John's on the Richelieu, a distance of only sixteen miles. The only railroad in Upper Canada for many years was a horse tramway, opened in 1839 between Queenston and Chippewa by the old portage road round the falls of Niagara. In 1845 the St. Lawrence and Atlantic Railway Company—afterwards a portion of the Grand Trunk Railway—obtained a charter for a line to connect with the Atlantic and St. Lawrence Railway Company of Portland, ...
— Lord Elgin • John George Bourinot
... impunity; consequently, on arriving at such obstructions, the cargoes are carried overland to navigable water above or below the falls (as the case may be), then the boats are dragged over and launched, again reloaded, and the travellers proceed. This operation is called "making a portage;" and as these portages vary from twelve yards to twelve miles in length, it may be readily conceived that a voyageur's life is not an easy one ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne |
