elcoming my friends, Lieutenant Back and Mr. Kendall, on their arrival
with three canoes. Their journey from Fort William had been expeditious,
notwithstanding the detention of eighteen days, by bad weather, on the
road. A serious misfortune had happened at the very outset of the
journey, through the unskilfulness of one of the bowmen, in allowing his
canoe to turn round and get before the current, while attempting to
ascend the Barrier Rapid, by which it was driven against a stone with
such force, as to be overset and broken. The stores were fortunately
saved, though completely drenched; but many of the delicate
atmospherical instruments were broken. Mr. Kendall was despatched to
Fort William for another canoe while the things were drying.

On a subsequent occasion, in the Winipeg River, the same man placed his
canoe in such a situation, as to endanger its being hurried down a steep
fall, and had it not been for the coolness of a man, named Lavalle, who
jumped into the water and held the canoe, while the rest of the crew
arranged themselves so as to drag it into a place of safety, every life
must have been sacrificed. The success, indeed the safety of this kind
of river navigation, among currents and rapids, depends on the skill of
the bowman; and after these proofs of his incapacity, Lieutenant Back
very properly engaged a substitute at the first fort to which he came.

At another time, in the Sturgeon-weir River, the canoe in which Mr.
Kendall was embarked, having been accidentally driven before the
current, she was only saved from destruction by his own powerful
exertion and activity.

These short details will convey an idea of the anxiety and trouble these
officers experienced in their journey to Chipewyan.

The party and the stores having now passed the more difficult part of
the road, I discharged as many of the Canadians as could be spared, and
furnished them with a canoe to take them home. Some went to Montreal;
and they were the first persons who had ever gone from that place to
Chipewyan, and returned in the same season.

[Sidenote: Monday, 25th.] The greater part of the 25th was employed in
obtaining astronomical observations, the results of which, we were
delighted to find, placed Fort Chipewyan within a few seconds of
longitude of the position in which it had been laid down on the former
Expedition. Our present azimuth compasses showed an increase in
variation, since 1820, of 2 degrees 16 minutes E. Th