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Show 24 BASIS OF AMERICAN HISTORY [ 1500 with difficulty. The streams, however, offered a ready means of transport and the light birch- bark canoe, which could be shouldered over the necessary portages, made it possible for the early voyageurs to penetrate far into the heart of the continent, carrying their merchandise for barter and returning with their bales of furs. River travel on east and west lines involved crossings from one stream to another; hence a point of great interest to the pioneer was the portage. From the Atlantic seaboard the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes offered the readiest access to the interior of the continent, and as a natural consequence we find the French, the settlers of the St. Lawrence basin, the first explorers of a large part of the interior of North America; and this, too,. before the English farther south had even passed the Alleghanies. By portages from Lake Superior to Rainy Lake and thence to Lake of the Woods, the French gained the northward- flowing streams and penetrated to Hudson Bay and far into the Canadian northwest. Their successors, the English and Scotch of the fur companies, were the first to reach the Pacific coast from the interior. It is interesting, too, that the first portage to the Mississippi Valley discovered by explorers was one of those lying farthest west- that from the Fox River to the Wisconsin. The place and convenience of these portages were well known to the Indian, and the European as a |