after our arrival at Fort Chipewyan we called upon Mr. Mac
Donald, the gentleman in charge of the Hudson's Bay Establishment called
Fort Wedderburne, and delivered to him Governor Williams's circular
Letter, which desired that every assistance should be given to further
our progress, and a statement of the requisitions which we should have
to make on his post.

Our first object was to obtain some certain information respecting our
future route; and accordingly we received from one of the North-West
Company's interpreters, named Beaulieu, a half-breed, who had been
brought up amongst the Dog-ribbed and Copper Indians, some satisfactory
information which we afterwards found tolerably correct, respecting the
mode of reaching the Copper-Mine{37} River, which he had descended a
considerable way, as well as of the course of that river to its mouth.
The Copper Indians, however, he said, would be able to give us more
accurate information as to the latter part of its course, as they
occasionally pursue it to the sea. He sketched on the floor a
representation of the river, and a line of coast according to his idea
of it. Just as he had finished, an old Chipewyan Indian named Black
Meat, unexpectedly came in, and instantly recognised the plan. He then
took the charcoal from Beaulieu, and inserted a track along the
sea-coast, which he had followed in returning from a war excursion, made
by his tribe against the Esquimaux. He detailed several particulars of
the coast and the sea, which he represented as studded with well-wooded
islands, and free from ice, close to the shore, in the month of July,
but not to a great distance. He described two other rivers to the
eastward of the Copper-Mine{38} River, which also fall into the Northern
Ocean. The Anatessy, which issues from the Contway-to or Rum Lake, and
the Thloueea-tessy or Fish River, which rises near the eastern boundary
of the Great Slave Lake; but he represented both of them as being
shallow, and too much interrupted by barriers for being navigated in any
other than small Indian canoes.

Having received this satisfactory intelligence, I wrote immediately to
Mr. Smith, of the North-West Company, and Mr. McVicar, of the Hudson's
Bay Company, the gentlemen in charge of the posts at the Great Slave
Lake, to communicate the object of the Expedition, and our proposed
route; and to solicit any information they possessed, or could collect,
from the Indians, relative to the countries w