This route has, however, of late years been disused, and we therefore turned towards the north, and crossing a small arm of the lake, arrived at Hill Gates by sunset; having come this day eleven miles.
_October 1_ .-- Hill gates is the name imposed on a romantic defile, whose rocky walls, rising perpendicularly to the height of sixty or eighty feet, hem in the stream for three quarters of a mile, in many places so narrowly, that there is a want of room to ply the oars.

In passing through this chasm we were naturally led to contemplate the mighty but, probably, slow and gradual effects of the water in wearing down such vast masses of rock; but in the midst of our speculations, the attention was excited anew to a grand and picturesque rapid, which, surrounded by the most wild and majestic scenery, terminated the defile.

The brown fishing-eagle had built its nest on one of the projecting cliffs.

In the course of the day we surmounted this and another dangerous portage, called, the Upper and Lower Hill Gate Portages, crossed a small sheet of water, termed the White Fall Lake, and entering the river of the same name, arrived at the White Fall about an hour after sunset, having come fourteen miles on a S.W.

course.
The whole of the 2d of October was spent in carrying the cargoes over a portage of thirteen hundred yards in length, and in launching the empty boats over three several ridges of rock which obstruct the channel and produce as many cascades.