He Sketched On The Floor A Representation Of The
River And A Line Of Coast According To His Idea Of It.
Just as he had
finished an old Chipewyan Indian named Black Meat unexpectedly came in
and instantly recognised the plan.
He then took the charcoal from
Beaulieu and inserted a track along the sea-coast which he had followed
in returning from a war excursion made by his tribe against the
Esquimaux. He detailed several particulars of the coast and the sea which
he represented as studded with well-wooded islands and free from ice
close to the shore in the month of July, but not to a great distance. He
described two other rivers to the eastward of the Copper-Mine River which
also fall into the Northern Ocean, the Anatessy, which issues from the
Contwayto or Rum Lake, and the Thloueeatessy or Fish River, which rises
near the eastern boundary of the Great Slave Lake; but he represented
both of them as being shallow and too much interrupted by barriers for
being navigated in any other than small Indian canoes.
Having received this satisfactory intelligence I wrote immediately to Mr.
Smith of the North-West Company and Mr. McVicar of the Hudson's Bay
Company, the gentlemen in charge of the posts at the Great Slave Lake, to
communicate the object of the Expedition and our proposed route, and to
solicit any information they possessed or could collect from the Indians
relative to the countries we had to pass through and the best manner of
proceeding.
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