or 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 drift wood, 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 Rein-deer 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. McV