1832. June 7th.  It was not until this day that the expedition was ready to embark at the head of the portage at St. Mary’s.  I had organized it strictly on temperance principles, observation having convinced me, during frequent expeditions in the wilderness, that not only is there no situation, unless administered from the medicine-chest, where men are advantaged by its use, but in nearly every instance of fatigue or exhaustion their powers are enfeebled by it, while, in a moral and intellectual sense, they are rendered incapable, neglectful, or disobedient.  This exclusion constituted a special clause in every verbal agreement with the men, who were Canadians, which I thought necessary to make, in order that they might have no reason to complain while inland of its exclusion.  They were promised, instead of it, abundance of good wholesome food at all times.  The effects of this were apparent even at the start.  They all presented smiling faces, and took hold of their paddles with a conscious feeling of satisfaction in the wisdom of their agreement.

The military and their supplies occupied a large Mackinack boat; my heavy stores filled another.  I traveled in a canoe-elege, as being better adapted to speed and the celerity of landing.  Each carried a national flag.  We slept the first night at Point Iroquois, which commands a full view of the magnificent entrance into the lake.  We were fifteen days in traversing the lake, being my fifth trip through this inland sea.  We passed up the St. Louis River by its numerous portages and falls to the Sandy Lake summit, and reached the banks of the Mississippi on the third of July, and ascertained its width above the junction of the Sandy Lake outlet to be 331 feet.  We were six days in ascending it to the central island in Cass Lake.  This being the point at which geographical discovery rests, I decided to encamp the men, deposit my heavy baggage, and fitted out a light party in hunting canoes to trace the stream to its source.  The Indians supplied me with five canoes of two fathoms each, and requiring but two men to manage each, which would allow one canoe to each of the gentlemen of my party.  I took three Indians and seven white men as the joint crew, making, with the sitters, fifteen persons.  We were provisioned for a few days, carried a flag, mess-basket, tent, and other necessary apparatus.  We left the island early the next morning, and reached the influx of the Mississippi into the Lake at an early hour.  To avoid a very circuitous bay, which I called Allen’s Bay, we made a short portage through open pine woods.

Fifty yards’ walk brought us and our canoe and baggage to the banks of Queen Anne’s Lake, a small sylvan lake through which the whole channel of the Mississippi passed.  A few miles above its termination we entered another lake of limited size, which the Indians called Pemetascodiac.  The river winds about in this portion of it—­through savannas, bordered by sandhills, and pines in the