ed, and wolves pursuing
them.

The night of the 25th was cold with hard frost. Early the next morning I
sent the men to cover the body of our departed companion Beauparlant
with the trunks and branches of trees, which they did; and shortly after
their return I opened his bundle, and found it contained two papers of
vermilion, several strings of beads, some fire-steels, flints, awls,
fish-hooks, rings, linen, and the glass of an artificial horizon. My
two men began to recover a little as well as myself, though I was by far
the weakest of the three; the soles of my feet were cracked all over,
and the other parts were as hard as horn, from constant walking. I again
urged the necessity of advancing to join the Commander's party, but they
said, they were not sufficiently strong.

On the 27th we discovered the remains of a deer, on which we feasted.
The night was unusually cold, and ice formed in a pint-pot within two
feet of the fire. The coruscations of the Aurora were beautifully
brilliant; they served to shew us eight wolves, which we had some
trouble to frighten away from our collection of deer's bones; and,
between their howling and the constant cracking of the ice, we did not
get much rest.

Having collected with great care, and by self-denial, two small packets
of dried meat or sinews, sufficient (for men who knew what it was to
fast) to last for eight days, at the rate of one indifferent meal per
day, we prepared to set out on the 30th. I calculated that we should be
about fourteen days in reaching Fort Providence; and allowing that we
neither killed deer nor found Indians, we could but be unprovided with
food six days, and this we heeded not whilst the prospect of obtaining
full relief was before us. Accordingly we set out against a keen
north-east wind, in order to gain the known route to Fort Providence. We
saw a number of wolves and some crows on the middle of the lake, and
supposing such an assembly was not met idly, we made for them and came
in for a share of a deer which they had killed a short time before, and
thus added a couple of meals to our stock. By four P.M. we gained the
head of the lake, or the direct road to Fort Providence, and some dry
wood being at hand, we encamped; by accident it was the same place where
the Commander's party had slept on the 19th, the day on which I supposed
they had left Fort Enterprise; but the encampment was so small, that we
feared great mortality had taken place amongs