Here, too, on the portages the toiling missionaries were wont to pause and erect their crosses and altars. In the long journeys back and forth from Quebec to the land of the Hurons, for instance, the portage paths of the Ottawa and St. Lawrence became familiar ground; where one had raised an altar another would be glad to pray. There were silent, holy places on these little roads by which we run noisily today--we who know little of the suffering, the devotion, and the piety of those who first walked and worshiped here.
The missionaries called the Indian trails "Roads of Iron" to suggest the fatigue and suffering endured in their rough journeys. If the ordinary trail was a Road of Iron, what of the portage path--which so often led over cliffs and mountain spurs in going around a waterfall or rapid? But these were not the most difficult portages. There were many carrying places which, uniting heads of streams or lakes, ran over high mountains, through the most impenetrable fastnesses--paths fit only for mountain goats. Yet up these rough steeps the missionaries of the Cross, soldiers, and traders forced their way, slipping, sliding, seizing now and again at any object which would offer assistance. Many of these climbs would tax a person free of baggage in this day of cleared fields and hills; fancy the toil of the old-time _voyageurs_ weighed down by canoes, provisions, and baggage, assailed by the clouds of insects which greeted a traveler in the old forests, and perhaps enduring fears of unseen enemies and unknown dangers.
Then there was the stifling heat of the primeval forests. Our present day notion of forests is diametrically opposed to old-time experience. To us, the forest is a popular symbol of restful coolness; formerly they were exhausting furnaces in the hot season, where horses fell headlong in their tracks and men fainted from fatigue. We wonder sometimes that pioneer armies frequently accomplished only ten or twelve miles a day, sometimes less. But these marches were mostly made in the months of October and November--the dryest months of the year in the Central West--and the stifling heat of the becalmed forest easily explains both slowness and wearing fatigue. It was the heat that all leaders of pioneer armies feared; for heat meant thirst and at this season of the year the ground was very dry. Many a crazed trooper has thrown himself into the first marsh or swamp encountered and has drunk his fill of water as deadly as any bullet.