my wishes to the men, that we should proceed towards Rein-Deer
Lake, but this proposal met with a direct refusal. Belanger stated
his inability to move, and St. Germain used similar language;
adding, for the first time, that he did not know the route, and that it
was of no use to go in the direction I mentioned, which was the one
agreed upon between the Commander and myself. I then insisted
that we should go by the known route, and join the Commander,
but they would not hear of i t ; they would remain where they were
until they had regained their strength; they said, I wanted to
expose them again to death (faire perir). In vain did I use every
argument to the contrary, for they were equally heedless to all.
Thus situated I was compelled to remain; and from this time to the
25th we employed ourselves in looking about for the remnants of
the deer and pieces of skin, which even the wolves had left; and by
pounding the bones, we were enabled to make a sort of soup, which
strengthened us greatly, though each still complained of weakness.
It was not without the greatest difficulty that I could restrain the
men from eating every scrap they found, though they were well
aware of the necessity there was of being economical in our present
situation, and to save whatever they could for our journey; yet
they could not resist the temptation, and whenever my back was
turned, they seldom failed to snatch at the nearest piece to them,
whether cooked or raw.
We had set fishing-lines, but without any success ; and we often
saw large herds of deer crossing the lake at full speed, and wolves
pursuing them.
The night of the 25th was cold with hard frost. Early the next
morning I sent the men to cover the body of our departed companion,
Beauparlant, with the trunks and branches of trees, which
they did; and shortly after their return I opened his bundle, and
found it contained two papers of vermillion, several strings of beads,
some fire-steels, flints, awls, fish-hooks, rings, linen, and the glass of
an artificial horizon. My two men began to recover a little as well
as myself, though I was by far the weakest of the three; the soles of
my feet were cracked all over, and the other parts were as hard as
horn, from constant walking. I again urged the necessity of advancing
to join the Commander’s party, but they said they were not
sufOfinci etnhtely 2s7trtohn gw. e discovered the remains of a deer, on wh.ich we
feasted. The night was unusually cold, and ice formed in a pint-pot
within two feet of the fire. The coruscations of the Aurora were
beautifully brilliant; they served to shew us eight wolves, winch we
had some trouble to frighten away from our collection of deers
bones; and, between their howling and the constant cracking of the
iceH, wavei ndgid cnoollte gcteetd m wuicthh rgerste.a t care, and by self denial, two sma1ll
packets of dried meat or sinews, sufficient (for men who knew what
it was to fast) to last for eight days, at the rate of one indifferent
meal per day, we prepared to set out on the 30th. I calculated
that we should be about fourteen days in reaching Fort Providence,
and allowing that we neither killed deer nor found Indians, we
could but be unprovided with food six days, and this we heeded not
whilst the prospect of obtaining fuff relief was before us. Accordingly
we set out against a keen north-east wind, in order to gam
the known route to Fort Providence. We saw a number of wolves
and some crows on the middle of the lake, and supposing such an
assembly was not met idly, we made for them and came in or a
share of a deer which they had killed a short time before, and thus
added a couple of meals to our stock. By four P.M. we gamed the
head of the lake, or the direct road to Fort Providence, and some
dry w ood b e i n g at hand, we encamped; byaccidentit w*.thesame
place where the Commander’s party had slept on the 19th the day
on which I supposed they had left Fort Enterprise; b u tth e Mb
campment was so small, that we feared great mortality had taken