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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Little Rivers by Henry van Dyke: pools where no boat could live for a moment. We ran down toward it
as far as the water served, and then turned off among the rocks on
the left hand, to take the portage.
These portages are among the troublesome delights of a journey in
the wilderness. To the guides they mean hard work, for everything,
including the boats, must be carried on their backs. The march of
the canoes on dry land is a curious sight. Andrew Marvell
described it two hundred years ago when he was poetizing beside the
little river Wharfe in Yorkshire:--
"And now the salmon-fishers moist
Their leathern boats begin to hoist,
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