The batteaux--great, open, flat-bottomed boats, forty feet long and eight feet beam, pointed at stem and stern--were not unlike the York boats used in Lord Wolseley's Red River expedition in 1870, and would carry five tons of cargo. Rigged with a movable mast stepped almost amid-ships, and a big lug-sail, these greyhounds of the lakes were, for passengers in our hero's time, often the only means of water transport between Quebec and Little York. As important factors in the transport of soldiers and munitions in the war of 1812, they deserve description.
While sailing well when before the wind, they yet, with their defective rig and keelless bottoms, carrying no weather helm, made little headway with the wind close abeam. On one occasion Isaac Brock left Lachine with a brigade of five batteaux, so that all hands could unite in making the portages. At the Cascades, the Milles Roches and the Cedars, three-quarters of the cargo had to be portaged by the packmen. At times these lightened boats were poled or tracked through the broken water, towed by the men, from such foothold as the rocky banks afforded, by means of a long lariat tied to the boat's bow, with loops over each trackman's shoulder, one man steering with a long sweep. When this treadmill work was impossible, owing to too steep banks, and where no batteau locks existed, the crew hauled the boats across the portage on a skidway of small rolling logs, and, so journeying, Prescott was reached. Here, the wind being favourable, lug-sails were hoisted and Brock's strange fleet started for Kingston, reaching it after twelve days' toil from Lachine, then coasting further along Lake Ontario to Little York (Toronto). When wind failed, the long oars were used, the men rising from the thwarts to pull, standing. Thus, alternately sitting and rising, pulling in unison, the light-hearted voyageurs would break into one of their wild French chants, quaint with catching refrain, in which our hero soon learned to join.
At Prescott Brock sometimes took the Government schooner, paying two guineas for a trip, which might last a week, or caught one of the small "two-stickers" that carried freight between Kingston and Queenston. If much pressed for time, the batteau would be exchanged for a caleche--the stage-coach was as yet only a dream--and he would resign himself to a rude jolting over the colonization road through the forest that flanked the rugged northern shore of Lake Ontario.