To add to the difficulties,
a very boisterous little river had to be bridged, and when evening
came we had gone forward only a short distance. We had come to a
rather open space, and here the men proposed making camp. Great
smooth-worn boulders lay strewn about as if flung at random from
some giant hand. A dry, black, leaflike substance patched their
surfaces, and this George told me is the _wakwanapsk_ which the
Indians in their extremity of hunger use for broth. Though black
and leaflike when mature, it is, in its beginning, like a disk of
tiny round green spots, and from this it gets its name. _Wakwuk--
fish-roe; _wanapisk_--a rock.
It was a very rough place, very desolate looking, and far from the
river. It made me shudder to think of spending Sunday there. So
the men were persuaded to try to reach the head of the rapid, which
was three-quarters of a mile farther on, taking forward only the
camp stuff. We were now travelling along the foot of Bald Mountain
seen from the hill on Monday, and passing what is known by the
trappers as North Pole Rapid, which was the wildest of the rapids
so far. The travelling was still rough, and the men were in a
hurry.
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