Note 5 — Chapter I · THE CHICAGO PORTAGE
Reading edition
"What Herman Moll, the English cartographer, called the 'land carriage of Chekakou' is described by James Logan, in a communication which he made in 1718 to the English Board of Trade, as running from the lake three leagues up the river, then a half a league of carriage, then a mile of water, next a small carry, then two miles to the Illinois, and then one hundred and thirty leagues to the Mississippi. But descriptions varied with the seasons. It was usually called a carriage of from four to nine miles, according to the stage of the water. In dry seasons it was even farther while in wet times it might not be more than a mile; and, indeed, when the intervening lands were 'drowned,' it was quite possible to pass in a canoe amid the sedges from Lake Michigan to the Des Plaines, and so to the Illinois and the Mississippi."—Winsor, Mississippi Basin, 24. For similar descriptions see Hulbert, Portage Paths, 181; Jesuit Relations, LIX, 313-14, note 41.
[6] Winsor, Mississippi Basin, 80, 104, 111, 163.
[7] Moll's map in his Atlas Minor is simply an English copy of Lahontan's map of 1703. For the latter see Lahontan, New Voyages to North America (Thwaites ed.), I, 156.
[8] For the substance of Logan's report see the British Board of Trade report of September 8, 1721, printed in O'Callaghan, Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New York, V, 621. This will be cited henceforth as New York Colonial Documents.