recommended that the winter establishment should be erected, and we soon
found that the situation they had chosen possessed all the advantages we
could desire. The trees were numerous and of a far greater size than we
had supposed them to be in a distant view, some of the pines being thirty
or forty feet high and two feet in diameter at the root. We determined on
placing the house on the summit of the bank which commands a beautiful
prospect of the surrounding country. The view in the front is bounded at
the distance of three miles by round-backed hills; to the eastward and
westward lie the Winter and Round-rock Lakes which are connected by the
Winter River whose banks are well clothed with pines and ornamented with
a profusion of mosses, lichens, and shrubs.

In the afternoon we read divine service and offered our thanksgiving to
the Almighty for His goodness in having brought us thus far on our
journey; a duty which we never neglected when stationary on the Sabbath.

The united length of the portages we had crossed since leaving Fort
Providence is twenty-one statute miles and a half and, as our men had to
traverse each portage four times, with a load of one hundred and eighty
pounds, and return three times light, they walked in the whole upwards of
one hundred and fifty miles. The total length of our voyage from
Chipewyan is five hundred and fifty-three miles.*

(*Footnote.
Stony and Slave Rivers: 260 statute miles.
Slave Lake: 107 statute miles.
Yellow-Knife River: 156.5 statute miles.
Barren country between the source of the Yellow-Knife River and Fort
Enterprise: 29.5 statute miles.
Total: 553 statute miles.)

A fire was made on the south side of the river to inform the chief of our
arrival, which, spreading before a strong wind, caught the whole wood,
and we were completely enveloped in a cloud of smoke for the three
following days.

On the next morning our voyagers were divided into two parties, the one
to cut the wood for the building of a storehouse and the other to fetch
the meat as the hunters procured it. An interpreter was sent with
Keskarrah the guide to search for the Indians who had made the fire seen
on Saturday, from whom we might obtain some supplies of provision. An
Indian was also despatched to Akaitcho with directions for him to come to
this place directly and bring whatever provision he had as we were
desirous of proceeding without delay to the Copper-Mine River. In the
evening our men br