[Illustration: Fighting a Grizzly.]
It took the crews from the 15th to the 25th of June to _portage_ past the
Great Falls. Cottonwood trees yielded carriage wheels two feet in
diameter, and the masts of the pirogues made axletrees. On these
wagonettes the canoes were dragged across the _portage_. It was hard,
hot work. Grizzlies prowled round the camp at night, wakening the
exhausted workers. The men actually fell asleep on their feet as they
toiled, and spent half the night double-soling their torn moccasins, for
the cactus already had most of the men limping from festered feet. Yet
not one word of complaint was uttered; and once, when the men were camped
on a green along the _portage_, a _voyageur_ got out his fiddle, and the
sore feet danced, which was more wholesome than moping or poulticing.
The boldness of the grizzlies was now explained. Antelope and buffalo
were carried over the falls. The bears prowled below for the carrion.
After failure to construct good hide boats, two other craft, twenty-five
and thirty-three feet long, were knocked together, and the crews launched
above the rapids for the far Shining Mountains that lured like a
mariner's beacon. Night and day, when the sun was hot, came the
boom-boom as of artillery from the mountains. The _voyageurs_ thought
this the explosion of stones, but soon learned to recognize the sound of
avalanche and land-slide. The river became narrower, deeper, swifter, as
the explorers approached the mountains.
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