At up to twenty-five hundred pounds apiece, the dugouts were also enormously heavy. Should the river prove so impassable that the expedition was forced to portage around it, the boats would be an excruciating burden and distraction as the men, vulnerable and exhausted, tried to haul them through the forest. The weight of the craft also greatly increased the stakes of even a minor mishap. Any slip with the heavy, waterlogged boats during a portage, in the rushing current, or merely during routine loading and unloading as they bobbed near the shore, could easily crush a man’s hand or leg if it
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