The next morning was warm and very fine.  Everyone was on the alert at an early hour, being anxious to commence the journey.  Our luggage consisted of ammunition, nets, hatchets, ice chisels, astronomical instruments, clothing, blankets, three kettles, and the two canoes, which were each carried by one man.  The officers carried such a portion of their own things as their strength would permit; the weight carried by each man was about ninety pounds, and with this we advanced at the rate of about a mile an hour including rests.  In the evening the hunters killed a lean cow out of a large drove of musk-oxen; but the men were too much laden to carry more than a small portion of its flesh.  The alluvial soil which, towards the mouth of the river, spreads into plains covered with grass and willows, was now giving place to a more barren and hilly country, so that we could but just collect sufficient brushwood to cook our suppers.  The part of the river we skirted this day was shallow and flowed over a bed of sand, its width about one hundred and twenty yards.  About midnight our tent was blown down by a squall and we were completely drenched with rain before it could be repitched.

On the morning of the 1st of September a fall of snow took place; the canoes became a cause of delay from the difficulty of carrying them in a high wind, and they sustained much damage through the falls of those who had charge of them.  The face of the country was broken by hills of moderate elevation but the ground was plentifully strewed with small stones which, to men bearing heavy burdens and whose feet were protected only by soft moose-skin shoes, occasioned great pain.  At the end of eleven miles we encamped and sent for a musk-ox and a deer which St. Germain and Augustus had killed.  The day was extremely cold, the thermometer varying between 34 and 36 degrees.  In the afternoon a heavy fall of snow took place on the wind changing from north-west to south-west.  We found no wood at the encampment but made a fire of moss to cook the supper and crept under our blankets for warmth.  At sunrise the thermometer was at 31 degrees and the wind fresh from north-west, but the weather became mild in the course of the forenoon and the snow disappeared from the gravel.  The afternoon was remarkably fine and the thermometer rose to 50 degrees.  One of the hunters killed a musk-ox.  The hills in this part are lower and more round-backed than those we passed yesterday, exhibiting but little naked rock; they were covered with lichens.

Having ascertained from the summit of the highest hill near the tents that the river continued to preserve a west course and, fearing that by pursuing it farther we might lose much time and unnecessarily walk over a great deal of ground, I determined on quitting its banks the next day and making as directly as we could for Point Lake.  We accordingly followed the river on the 3rd only to the place where the musk-ox had been killed last evening and, after the meat was procured,