The communication by the Montreal with the Chippewa River, and by the Mauvais and Brulé Rivers with the St. Croix, is difficult and precarious. The routes are interrupted by long, numerous, and tedious portages, across which the boats and all their contents are transported by the men. It is doubtful whether their communication can ever be much used, except for the purposes to which they are now applied. In the present state of the Indian trade, human labor is nothing, because the number of men employed in transporting the property is necessary to conduct the trade, after the different parties have reached their destination, and the intermediate labor does not affect the aggregate amount of the expense. Under ordinary circumstances, and for those purposes to which water communication is applied in the common course of civilized trade, these routes would be abandoned. From the mouth of the Montreal River alone to its source, there are not less than forty-five miles of portage. The St. Louis River is a considerable stream, and for twenty-five miles its navigation is uninterrupted. At this distance, near an establishment of the Southwest Company, commences the Grand Portage about six miles in length, across spurs of the Porcupine ridge of mountains. One other portage, one of a mile and a half, and a continued succession of falls, called the Grand Rapids, extending nine miles, and certainly unsurmountable except by the skill and perseverance of the Canadian boatmen, conduct us to a comparatively tranquil part of the river. From here to the head of the Savannah River, a small branch of the St. Louis, the navigation is uninterrupted, and after a portage of four miles, the descent is easy into Lake au Sable, whose outlet is within two miles of the Mississippi. This was until 1816 the principal establishment of the British Northwest Company upon these waters, and is now applied to the same purpose by the American Fur Company. From Lac au Sable, we ascended the Mississippi to the Upper Red Cedar Lake, which may be considered as the head of the navigation of that river. The whole distance, 350 miles, is almost uninhabitable. The first part of the route the country is generally somewhat elevated and interspersed with pine woods. The latter part is level wet prairie. The sources of this river flow from a region filled with lakes and swamps, whose geological character indicates a recent formation, and which, although the highest table-land of this part of the Continent, is yet a dead level, presenting to the eye a succession of dreary uninteresting objects. Interminable marshes, numerous ponds, and a few low, naked, sterile plains, with a small stream, not exceeding sixty feet in width, meandering in a very crooked channel through them, are all the objects which are found to reward the traveller for the privations and difficulties which he must encounter in his ascent to this forbidding region.