It was a great sacrifice of Smith’s personal desires, to be one of the re-discoverers of the falls, to the interests of the expedition, and it involved a great deal of hard work, for, after paddling and rowing all day, he had to build and break camp every night and morning, as Young’s hand grew steadily worse and was all he could attend to.  At the mouth of the river, which was reached in shorter time than was expected, and without accident, Young obtained some relief from applications of spruce gum to his hand by Joe Michelini, a trapper and hunter, famous for his skill in all Labrador.  Northwest River was reached the following day, and after a few days of rest for Smith, during which time Young’s injury began to mend also under the influences of rest and shelter, they hired a small schooner boat to take them to Rigolette.  On the passage they were struck by a squall in the night, nearly swamped, and compelled to cut the Rushton boat adrift in order to save themselves.  The next day they searched the leeward shore of the lake in vain, and had to go on without her, arriving at Rigolette without further accident, and had been there about a week when we arrived.  The boat was picked up later in a badly damaged condition, and given to the finder.

While Young outlined his experience we hunted up Smith, who had been making himself useful as a clerk to the factor at the Post, Mr. Bell, and all went on board the Julia as soon as she arrived, to report and relieve in a measure the anxiety of the professor and the boys.

[Anxious waiting] The day appointed for meeting the river party was the day on which we reached Rigolette, August 25th, and so a sharp lookout was kept for the two remaining members of the party, on whom, now, the failure or success of that part of the expedition rested.  As they did not appear, we moved up to a cove near Eskimo Island, at the eastern end of Lake Melville, the following day, and there spent four days of anxious waiting.  Some dredging and geological work was done, and an attempt was made to examine more carefully the remains of the Eskimo village before referred to on Eskimo Island, which some investigators had thought the remains of a Norse settlement.  The turf was too tough to break through without a plow, and we had to give it up, doing just enough to satisfy ourselves that the remains were purely Eskimo.

All the work attempted was done in a half-hearted manner, for our thoughts were with Cary and Cole, and as the days went by and they did not appear, but were more and more overdue, our suspense became almost unbearable.  Added to this was the thought that we could wait but a few days more at the longest, without running the danger of being imprisoned all winter, and for that we were poorly prepared.

The first day of September we moved back to Rigolette to get supplies and make preparations for our voyage home, as it was positively unsafe to remain any longer.  The Gulf of St. Lawrence is an ugly place to cross at any time in September, for in that month the chances are rather against a small vessel’s getting across safely.