Volume 1

26 LAKE OF THE WOODS— RAT PORTAGE.
du Lac des Bois under full sail. This was looked upon as
extraordinary ;
we commonly carry our canoes and baggage
at this place upward of half a mile, and sometimes a full
mile, according to the state of the water. We now had
a fine breeze aft, which in a few hours took us to the end of
the lake, at Portage du Rat," which is about 150 paces over.
Here we found Indians making canoes for sale and trading
sturgeon and dried berries for liquor. We embarked and
labors of the joint commission. The Northwest pt. of the Northwest Angle
of the Lake of the Woods, and vicinity, is shown on a scale of six inches to the
mile on the map facing p. 83 of the U. S. Northern Boundary Report
already cited. It is a swampy spot, where Minnesota, Manitoba, and Ontario
meet, about if m. from the dock (McPherson's, H. B. Co.) to which the Dawson
road extends from Winnipeg on Red r. ; another road comes to this place
from Whitemouth 1., Manitoba, on the S. W. ; the Powawassan and Nootinaquaham
Indian reserves are contiguous or adjacent, in Ontario. The boundary line
which drops due S. from the N. W. pt. on the meridian of 95'' 08' 56.7" cuts
of? from Canada about 150 sq. m. of U. S. mainland, the same constituting
a detached fragment of Minnesota ; for this meridian strikes the parallel of 49*
N. in the lake, E. of the Buffalo pt. already named, and thus also the extreme
S. E. corner of Manitoba is in the water ; what would otherwise be a right angle
being nicked off to the extent of about two townships. Most of the international
water-boundary, however, is of course along the line from the mouth of
Rainy r. to the entrance of the Northwest Angle ; it starts N. between Oak pt.
and Massacre isl., leaves Big isl. on the E. and Garden or Cornfield isl. on the
W., and so on. Thus it happens that, after more than a century of dispute,
arbitration, and survey, two nations have in and about the Lake-of the Woods
that politico-geographical curiosity of a boundary that a glance at the map
will show, that no one could have foreseen, and that would be inexplicable without
some knowledge of the steps in the process by which it was brought about.
Either nation could better have afforded to let the boundary run around the S.
shore of the lake from the mouth of Rainy r. to the point where the shore is
intersected by the parallel of 49°.
'9 Rat portage is occasioned by a rock a few yards long. The name is said to
have originated in the habit of muskrats of crossing here in great numbers. The
location is a very well-known one, near the extreme N. or foot of Lake of the
Woods.
Here the main line of the Canadian Pacific now crosses from the town
of Rat Portage to a place opposite called Keewatin, and between these two is
the outlet of the lake into Winnipeg r. Henry gives us so few names that his
intricate traverse of the lake is not easily traced in detail. Thompson names in
succession Cormorant pt., the Red Stone (Henry's Rocher Rouge), Wood
portage (Henry's Portage du Lac des Bois?), Burnt Wood isl.. Grand " Galley
"
(Galet), and then Rat portage.