g
at the boat: the patches of ground which had for the last few days been
visible, were again covered with snow, and the general aspect was bleak
and wintry.

Dr. Richardson and Mr. Kendall returned on the 1st of May, and we were
furnished with the following particulars of their journey. Their course,
on leaving us, was first directed to the fishery in Mac Vicar's Bay,
which they reached on the fourth day, and from whence, taking with them
another sledge-load of provisions and an additional attendant, they
continued their journey to the bottom of Mac Tavish Bay, the most
easterly part of the Lake. The reduction in their stock of provisions
now caused them to commence their return, and they reached the fort
after an absence of three weeks, during which, in very unfavourable
weather, they travelled about three hundred and eighty miles. Dr.
Richardson had sailed four hundred and eighty miles through the lake in
the autumn, and in the two excursions, five hundred miles of its shores
were delineated, and the positions of many points established by
astronomical observations. About twenty miles of the north shore of Mac
Tavish Bay are the only parts of the Bear Lake remaining unsurveyed.
[Sidenote: May, 1st.] The following brief description of Bear Lake is
extracted from Dr. Richardson's Journal:--

"Great Bear Lake is formed by the union of five arms or bays, which were
named after Messrs. Keith, Smith, Dease, Mac Tavish, and Mac Vicar, of
the Hudson's Bay Company. The principal feeding-stream, named Dease
River, rises in the Copper Mountains, and falls into the upper end of
Dease Bay, which is the most northern part of the lake, and Bear Lake
River, which conveys the waters of the lake to the Mackenzie, issues
from Keith Bay, the most southerly arm. Mac Tavish Bay is the most
easterly portion of the lake, and Smith Bay, which lies opposite to it,
runs to the westward. Mac Vicar Bay has a southerly direction nearly
parallel to Keith Bay. The length of the lake, from Dease River to Bear
Lake River, is about one hundred and seventy-five miles; and its
breadth, from the bottom of Smith Bay to the bottom of Mac Tavish Bay,
is one hundred and fifty miles. A range of granite hills skirts the
bottom of Mac Tavish Bay. The Great Bear Mountain, at whose base some
bituminous shale cliffs are exposed, is about nine hundred feet high,
and separates Mac Vicar and Keith Bays; a similar mountain lies betwixt
Keith and Smith Bays. In Dease