the interest of his employers.  On the present occasion we felt indebted to him for the sympathy he displayed for our distresses, and the kindness with which he administered to our personal wants.  After this conference such Indians as were indebted to the Company were paid for the provision they had given us by deducting a corresponding sum from their debts; in the same way we gave a reward of sixteen skins of beaver to each of the persons who had come to our relief at Fort Enterprise.  As the debts of Akaitcho and his hunters had been effaced at the time of his engagement with us we placed a sum equal to the amount of provision they had recently supplied to their credit on the Company’s books.  These things being, through the moderation of the Indians, adjusted with an unexpected facility, we gave them a keg of mixed liquors (five parts water) and distributed among them several fathoms of tobacco, and they retired to their tents to spend the night in merriment.

Adam, our interpreter, being desirous of uniting himself with the Copper Indians, applied to me for his discharge which I granted, and gave him a bill on the Hudson’s Bay Company for the amount of his wages.  These arrangements being completed we prepared to cross the lake.

Mr. Weeks provided Dr. Richardson and I with a cariole each and we set out at eleven A.M. on the 15th for Moose-Deer Island.  Our party consisted of Belanger who had charge of a sledge laden with the bedding and drawn by two dogs, our two cariole men, Benoit and Augustus.  Previous to our departure we had another conference with Akaitcho who, as well as the rest of his party, bade us farewell with a warmth of manner rare among the Indians.

The badness of Belanger’s dogs and the roughness of the ice impeded our progress very much and obliged us to encamp early.  We had a good fire made of the driftwood which lines the shores of this lake in great quantities.  The next day was very cold.  We began the journey at nine A.M. and encamped at the Big Cape, having made another short march in consequence of the roughness of the ice.

On the 17th we encamped on the most southerly of the Reindeer Islands.  This night was very stormy but, the wind abating in the morning, we proceeded and by sunset reached the fishing-huts of the Company at Stony Point.  Here we found Mr. Andrews, a clerk of the Hudson’s Bay Company, who regaled us with a supper of excellent white-fish for which this part of Slave Lake is particularly celebrated.  Two men with sledges arrived soon afterwards, sent by Mr. McVicar, who expected us about this time.  We set off in the morning before daybreak with several companions and arrived at Moose-Deer Island about one P.M.  Here we were received with the utmost hospitality by Mr. McVicar, the chief trader of the Hudson’s Bay Company in this district, as well as by his assistant Mr. McAuley.  We had also the happiness of joining our friend Mr. Back; our feelings on this occasion can be well imagined and we were deeply impressed with gratitude to him for his exertions in sending the supply of food to Fort Enterprise, to which under Divine Providence we felt the preservation of our lives to be owing.  He gave us an affecting detail of the proceedings of his party since our separation, the substance of which I shall convey to the reader by the following extracts from his Journal.