Thus completely equipped, we entered the Black Bear Island Lake, the navigation of which requires a very experienced pilot.

Its length is twenty-two miles, and its breadth varies from three to five, yet it is so choked with islands, that no channel is to be found through it, exceeding a mile in breadth.

At sunset we landed, and encamped on an island, and at six A.M.on the 24th, left the lake and crossed three portages into another, which has, probably, several communications with the last, as that by which we passed is too narrow to convey the whole body of the Missinippi.

At one of these portages called the Pin Portage is a rapid, about ten yards in length, with a descent of ten or twelve feet, and beset with rocks.
Light canoes sometimes venture down this fatal gulf, to avoid the portage, unappalled by the warning crosses which overhang the brink, the mournful records of former failures.
The Hudson's Bay Company's people whom we passed on the 23rd, going to the rock house with their furs, were badly provided with food, of which we saw distressing proofs at every portage behind them.

They had stripped the birch trees of their rind to procure the soft pulpy vessels in contact with the wood, which are sweet, but very insufficient to satisfy a craving appetite.
The lake to the westward of the Pin Portage, is called Sandfly Lake; it is seven miles long; and a wide channel connects it with the Serpent Lake, the extent of which to the southward we could not discern.