Editor's Note:
Schoolcraft: "On reaching the foot of the Grand Portage, we exchanged two of our largest canoes with the American Fur Company, for four or smaller size adapted to the navigation of the river above the portage, and now proceeded on our voyage in seven small canoes.
"The river is ascended six miles to the Portage aux Coteaux, which of three pauses, and is a mile and a half across. The carrying path lies over an elevated tract of rough country consisting of slate in a vertical position, which is in many places naked, and some idea may be formed of the singular appearance of the rock, by comparing it to the leaves of a book standing edgewise. The effect of this arrangement of the strata, upon the mockasins and feet of the voyageurs, who cross this portage has led to its name -- the portage of knives.
"At the lower end of it, this slate forms a lone standing pile, or pyramid, in the centre of the river, of eighty or ninety feet in height, and supporting in its crevices a few stunted cedars and pines. The banks on either side are comparatively low at the water's edge, but preserve the same geological character and position, and at a short distance back, rise to a corresponding elevation...
"The growth of trees here is almost exclusively cedar, pine, and spruce. We encamped at the head of the portage at an early hour in the afternoon. Here the river has a perpendicular fall of fourteen feet... At this place we also found the red raspberry."
Location: near modern Knife Portage Dam, Cloquet, Minn.
Another helpful map can be found here.
View Doty's handwritten manuscript of this page
View page in the 1895 printed edition
View this page in Schoolcraft's 1821 Narrative
The rapids in the river continuing strong the gent, and surplus of Soldiers over the number requisite to man the canoes, walked across a point of land 1 mile made by a bend in the river. At the point [where] we reached the river is a shoot or sudden fall of about 3 ft. When the canoes came up this, the bows were entirely out of water while the men in the stern were not visible. It requires great exertion to raise a canoe up there. The river presents a beautiful prospect, greatly heightened by a number of small islands singularly formed by large high rocks at their head on the lower side of which a soil seems to have gathered by the eddies, and are now covered with large handsome trees.
