and our fuel principally consisted of the roots of decayed pines which we had some difficulty to collect in sufficient quantity for cooking.  When this material is wanting the reindeer lichen and other mosses that grow in profusion on the gravelly acclivities of the hills are used as substitutes.  Three more of the hunters arrived with meat this evening which supply came very opportunely as our nets were unproductive.  At eight P.M. a faint Aurora Borealis appeared to the southward, the night was cold, the wind strong from North-West.

We were detained some time in the following morning before the fishing-nets, which had sunk in the night, could be recovered.

After starting we first crossed the Orkney Lake, then a portage which brought us to Sandy Lake and here we missed one of our barrels of powder which the steersman of the canoe then recollected had been left the day before.  He and two other men were sent back to search for it in the small canoe.  The rest of the party proceeded to the portage on the north side of the Grizzly-Bear Lake, where the hunters had made a deposit of meat, and there encamped to await their return which happened at nine P.M. with the powder.  We perceived from the direction of this lake that considerable labour would have been spared if we had continued our course yesterday, instead of striking off at the guide’s suggestion, as the bottom of this lake cannot be far separated from either Hunter’s Lake or the one to the westward of it.  The chief and all the Indians went off to hunt accompanied by Pierre St. Germain the interpreter.  They returned at night bringing some meat and reported that they had put the carcasses of several reindeer en cache.  These were sent for early next morning and, as the weather was unusually warm, the thermometer at noon being 77 degrees, we remained stationary all day that the women might prepare the meat for keeping by stripping the flesh from the bones and drying it in the sun over a slow fire.  The hunters were again successful and by the evening we had collected the carcasses of seventeen deer.  As this was a sufficient store to serve us until we arrived at Winter Lake the chief proposed that he and his hunters should proceed to that place and collect some provision against our arrival.  He also requested that we would allow him to be absent ten days to provide his family with clothing as the skin of the reindeer is unfit for that purpose after the month of September.  We could not refuse to grant such a reasonable request but caused St. Germain to accompany him that his absence might not exceed the appointed time.  Previous to his departure the chief warned us to be constantly on our guard against the grizzly bears which he described as being numerous in this vicinity and very ferocious; one had been seen this day by an Indian, to which circumstance the lake owes its appellation.  We afterwards learned that the only bear in this part of the country is the brown bear and that this by no means possesses the ferocity which the Indians, with their usual love of exaggeration, ascribe to it.  The fierce grizzly bear which frequents the sources of the Missouri is not found on the barren grounds.