er useful stores they could supply. We learned with
regret that, in consequence of the recent lavish expenditure of their
goods in support of the opposition, their supply to us would of necessity
be very limited. The men too were backward in offering their services,
especially those of the Hudson's Bay Company who demanded a much higher
rate of wages than I considered it proper to grant.

June 3.

Mr. Smith, a partner of the North-West Company, arrived from the Great
Slave Lake bearing the welcome news that the principal chief of the
Copper Indians had received the communication of our arrival with joy and
given all the intelligence he possessed respecting the route to the
sea-coast by the Copper-Mine River; and that he and a party of his men,
at the instance of Mr. Wentzel, a clerk of the North-West Company whom
they wished might go along with them, had engaged to accompany the
Expedition as guides and hunters. They were to wait our arrival at Fort
Providence on the north side of the Slave Lake. Their information
coincided with that given by Beaulieu. They had no doubt of our being
able to obtain the means of subsistence in travelling to the coast. This
agreeable intelligence had a happy effect upon the Canadian voyagers,
many of their fears being removed: several of them seemed now disposed to
volunteer; and indeed on the same evening two men from the North-West
Company offered themselves and were accepted.

June 5.

This day Mr. Back and I went over to Fort Wedderburne to see Mr.
Robertson respecting his quota of men. We learned from him that,
notwithstanding his endeavours to persuade them, his most experienced
voyagers still declined engaging without very exorbitant wages. After
some hesitation however six men engaged with us who were represented to
be active and steady; and I also got Mr. Robertson's permission for St.
Germain, an interpreter belonging to this Company, to accompany us from
Slave Lake if he should choose. The bowmen and steersmen were to receive
one thousand six hundred livres Halifax per annum, and the middle men one
thousand two hundred, exclusive of their necessary equipments; and they
stipulated that their wages should be continued until their arrival in
Montreal or their rejoining the service of their present employers.

I delivered to Mr. Robertson an official request that the stores we had
left at York Factory and the Rock Depot with some other supplies might be
forwarded to Slave Lake