a party of Esquimaux had lately
occupied the same spot, the ashes of their fires being still fresh, and
the leaves of the willow poles to which they had attached their nets,
unwithered. Before we retired to bed, the arms were examined, and a
watch was set; a practice which we kept up for the remainder of the
voyage. Much rain fell in the night.

[Sidenote: Wednesday, 5th.] On the 5th we embarked at four in the
morning, and soon afterwards, the channel conducting us to the base of
the Rein-Deer Hills, Mr. Kendall and I ascended an eminence, which was
about four hundred feet high. Its summit was thinly coated with gravel,
and its sides were formed of sand and clay, inclosing some beds of
brownish-red sandstone, and of gray-coloured slate-clay. Clumps of trees
grew about half way up, but the top produced only a thin wiry grass. At
eleven A.M. we landed to breakfast, and remained on shore until noon, in
the hope of obtaining an observation for latitude, but the sun was
obscured by clouds. In the afternoon I had an extensive view from the
summit of a hill of flat alluvial lands, divided into islands by
inosculations of the channels of the river, and bounded, at the distance
of about forty miles to the westward, by the Rocky Mountains. As we
advanced to the northward, we perceived the trees to diminish in size,
becoming more scattered, and ascend a shorter way up the sides of the
hills, and they altogether terminated in latitude 68 degrees 40 minutes,
in an even line running across the islands; though one solitary spruce
fir was seen in 68 degrees 53 minutes. Perhaps the lands to the
northward of this abrupt line were too low and wet for the growth of the
white spruce, the tree which attains the highest latitude on this
continent.

We pitched our tents for the night on the site of another Esquimaux
encampment, where a small bit of moose deer's meat was still attached to
a piece of wood at the fire-place; and we saw, from the tracks of the
people and dogs in the sand, that a party had left the river here to
cross the Rein-Deer Hills. From information obtained through the
Sharp-eyed, or Quarreller tribe of Indians, this appears to be one of
the Esquimaux routes to a large piece of brackish water named Esquimaux
Lake, and alluded to by Mackenzie in several parts of his narrative. The
length of our voyage this day was forty-four miles, and our encampment
was opposite to an island named by Captain Franklin after William
Williams