and seeming defeat. Nowhere in the North can the heroism of the Catholic missionaries be more plainly read today in any material objects than in the deep-worn, half-forgotten portage paths which lay along their routes. The nobility of their ambitions, compared with those of explorers, traders, and military and civil officials, has ever been conspicuous, but the full measure of their self-sacrifice cannot be realized until we know better the intense physical suffering they here endured. If the study of portage paths results only in a deeper appreciation of the bravery of these black-robed fathers, it will be worth far more than its cost.
In this connection it is proper to make a restriction; portage paths not only joined the heads of streams flowing in opposite directions, but were also land routes between rivers and lakes, between lakes, and even between rivers running in the same direction. They not only connected the Etchemin and St. John, and the Chaudière and Kennebec, but also the St. John and the Kennebec, and the Kennebec and Penobscot. Many portages joined the
