Here they were obliged to pass the canoes down cautiously by a line from the impending banks.

This consumed a great part of a day; and after they had reembarked they were soon again impeded by rapids, when they had to unload their canoes and carry them and their cargoes for some distance by land.

It is at these places, called "portages," that the Canadian voyageur exhibits his most valuable qualities; carrying heavy burdens, and toiling to and fro, on land and in the water, over rocks and precipices, among brakes and brambles, not only without a murmur, but with the greatest cheerfulness and alacrity, joking and laughing and singing scraps of old French ditties.
The spirits of the party, however, which had been elated on first varying their journeying from land to water, had now lost some of their buoyancy.

Everything ahead was wrapped in uncertainty.

They knew nothing of the river on which they were floating.