"I forget, dear. Ask Grandmother."
"Twelve miles, son, and over a road that is full of history for Helen. Grandfather will tell her all about it. We are turning into it now. Do you see the name on the tree?"
"'Portage Street,'" read Helen.
The party made a brave showing in the car. Helen, who was almost as tall as Roger and who was in the high school, sat on the front seat with Dicky so that he could superintend the motorman's activities. Mrs. Morton and Roger sat behind them, he with his hands full of the long tickets which were to take them all to Chautauqua and home again. Back of them were the two girl cousins of nearly the same age, about thirteen, both named Ethel Morton and strikingly alike in appearance. Their schoolmates had nicknamed them from the color of their eyes, "Ethel Brown" and "Ethel Blue." "Ethel Brown" was Lieutenant Morton's daughter, and sister of Roger and Helen and Dicky. "Ethel Blue" was Captain Morton's daughter and she had lived almost all her life with her cousins, because her mother had died when she was a tiny baby.
Grandfather and Grandmother Emerson, Mrs. Morton's father and mother, were in the last seat of the four, Grandmother eagerly looking out of the window to recall the sights that she had seen on her previous trip to Chautauqua, ten years before.
"Why is it called 'Portage Street'?" asked Helen, when everybody was comfortably settled. Helen was fond of history and had just taken a prize offered to the first year class of the high school for the best account of the Indians in the colonial days of that part of New Jersey where the Mortons lived.
"'Portage' comes from the French word 'carry,' as you high school people know," answered grandfather. "A portage is a place where you have to carry your boat around some obstruction. For instance, suppose you were an Indian traveling in a canoe from Lake Ontario to Lake Erie, you would have to carry your canoe around the rapids of the Niagara River because your little craft could not live in that tremendous current, and around Niagara Falls because—"
"Because it couldn't climb a tree," laughed Roger.
"Just about that," accepted grandfather.
"Are there any waterfalls around here?" asked Ethel Brown.