ief and the guides then gave respecting
the route to the Copper-Mine River, and its course to the sea, coincided
in every material point with the statements which were made by Boileau
and Black-meat at Chipewyan, but they differed in their descriptions
of the coast. The information, however, collected from both sources was
very vague and unsatisfactory. None of his tribe had been more than
three days' march along the sea-coast to the eastward of the river's
mouth.

As the water was unusually high this season, the Indian guides
recommended our going by a shorter route to the Copper-Mine River than
that they had first proposed to Mr. Wentzel, and they assigned as a
reason for the change, that the rein-deer would be sooner found upon
this track. They then drew a chart of the proposed route on the floor
with charcoal, exhibiting a chain of twenty-five small lakes extending
towards the north, about one half of them connected by a river which
flows into Slave Lake, near Fort Providence. One of the guides, named
Keskarrah, drew the Copper-Mine River, running through the Upper Lake,
in a westerly direction towards the Great Bear Lake, and then northerly
to the sea. The other guide drew the river in a straight line to the sea
from the above-mentioned place, but, after some dispute, admitted the
correctness of the first delineation. The latter was elder brother to
Akaitcho, and he said that he had accompanied Mr. Hearne on his journey,
and though very young at the time, still remembered many of the
circumstances, and particularly the massacre committed by the Indians on
the Esquimaux.

They pointed out another lake to the southward of the river, about three
days' journey distant from it, on which the chief proposed the next
winter's establishment should be formed, as the rein-deer would pass
there in the autumn and spring. Its waters contained fish, and there was
a sufficiency of wood for building as well as for the winter's
consumption. These were important considerations, and determined me in
pursuing the route they now proposed. They could not inform us what time
we should take in reaching the lake, until they saw our manner of
travelling in the large canoes, but they supposed we might be about
twenty days, in which case I entertained the hope that if we could then
procure provision we should have time to descend the Copper-Mine River
for a considerable distance if not to the sea itself, and return to the
lake before the win