Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/174

154 cramp it, sends its sap into boughs and twigs, and through them into each leaf. When the smooth downward flow of one of these streams was broken by falls the Indian would boldly shoot them, unless the water was shallow or the rocks were too many and rugged.

The lakes, ranging from inland seas to ponds, are fed by trickling streams, rivulets, and brooks, pouring in their contributions it may be from three points of the compass, and they find their outlet by rivers running to the fourth point. The mouth of each river leads it into another larger stream, whose tributaries connect another series of lakes and brooks and rivulets. The portages, or carrying-places between these water-courses, may be only a few rods for land-travel; very rarely do they stretch to a half score of miles. The sedgy, reedy swamps, the cascades and cataracts must also be circumvented by portages. Study carefully one of those skeleton maps of this vast continent, giving only these expanses of water and the broad and attenuated streams, as you would a town or State map showing the highways of the country: you will marvel at the grandeur, the beauty, the ingenuity, and, in these practical days we must add, the convenience of the arrangement. The white man soon learned to follow these water-highways for curiosity or traffic; but he made first rude and then improved drafts of them on paper for those who should follow him. The red men carried in their heads and minds all this elaborate reticulation of our continent; and so they traversed it by land and water, when they had occasion to do so, for thousands of miles, with but trifling deflexions from a straight course. Just as our railroads have their junctions and their branches, so the water-highways of the Indian afforded many central stations, with a large liberty for diverting the course. One of the most remarkable of these water-basins for extent of communication is Lake Winnipeg in the Northwest, 270 miles in length, and 80 in its broadest width. It is fed by almost innumerable streams,