After pulling, on the 14th, seven miles and a quarter on the lake, a violent wind drove us for shelter to a small island, or rather a ridge of rolled stones thrown up by the frequent storms which agitate this lake.  The weather did not moderate the whole day and we were obliged to pass the night on this exposed spot.  The delay however enabled us to obtain some lunar observations.  The wind having subsided we left our resting place the following morning, crossed the remainder of the lake, and in the afternoon arrived at Muddy Lake which is very appropriately named as it consists merely of a few channels winding amongst extensive mudbanks which are overflowed during the spring floods.  We landed at an Indian tent which contained two numerous families amounting to thirty souls.  These poor creatures were badly clothed and reduced to a miserable condition by the whooping-cough and measles.  At the time of our arrival they were busy in preparing a sweating-house for the sick.  This is a remedy which they consider, with the addition of singing and drumming, to be the grand specific for all diseases.  Our companions having obtained some geese in exchange for rum and tobacco, we proceeded a few more miles and encamped on Devil’s Drum Island, having come during the day twenty miles and a half.  A second party of Indians were encamped on an adjoining island, a situation chosen for the purpose of killing geese and ducks.

On the 16th we proceeded eighteen miles up the Saskatchewan.  Its banks are low, covered with willows, and lined with drift timber.  The surrounding country is swampy and intersected by the numerous arms of the river.  After passing for twenty or thirty yards through the willow thicket on the banks of the stream we entered an extensive marsh, varied only by a distant line of willows which marks the course of a creek or branch of the river.  The branch we navigated today is almost five hundred yards wide.  The exhalations from the marshy soil produced a low fog although the sky above was perfectly clear.  In the course of the day we passed an Indian encampment of three tents whose inmates appeared to be in a still more miserable condition than those we saw yesterday.  They had just finished the ceremony of conjuration over some of their sick companions; and a dog which had been recently killed as a sacrifice to some deity was hanging to a tree where it would be left (I was told) when they moved their encampment.

We continued our voyage up the river to the 20th with little variation of scenery or incident, travelling in that time about thirty miles.  The near approach of winter was marked by severe frosts which continued all day unless when the sun chanced to be unusually bright and the geese and ducks were observed to take a southerly course in large flocks.  On the morning of the 20th we came to a party of Indians encamped behind the bank of the river on the borders of a small marshy lake for the purpose of killing waterfowl.