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 been cleared and trodden hard by a thousand campers, and if wood was scarce in the immediate locality there was abundance at no great distance. No one familiar with camping need be told the advantages, natural and artificial, to be found on an old camping ground.

But here it should be noted that the shortest portage between any two bodies of water was rather an arbitrary line, at least theoretically so. It was chosen as a good site, not for staying, but for passing. Usually it traversed some sort of watershed, more or less distinct; on either side low ground, marshes, and swamps were not uncommon. In many instances the length of the portage path varied inversely with the stage of the water. Some portages were a mile long in wet seasons and ten miles long in dry. Where this was true the country through which the path ran was not altogether suitable for camps nor for villages, which the camps on important portages often became. Often, however, the nature of the country was favorable for habitation, and at many portages the camps became permanent. At such points Indian