58 COMMENCEMENT OF THE EXPEDITION. 



so worthy of all exertion, in which I thought my- 

 self at length free to indulge, raised my spirits 

 to a more than ordinary pitch of excitement. 



We paddled along, with little respite, until 

 5 p. m., when a small speck was seen under 

 the steep sandy cliffs round Mossy Point, on the 

 northern boundary of Lake Winnipeg. It was 

 coming towards us, and was at first taken for an 

 Indian canoe ; but as we approached, I had the 

 satisfaction to find that it was the Company's 

 light canoe from the Athabasca, with Messrs. 

 Smith and Charles, two gentlemen whom I had 

 long wished to see. From the latter I now 

 learnt that he had made every endeavour to 

 obtain, by inquiries from the Indians, a toler- 

 ably correct notion of the situation of the river 

 Thlew-ee-choh ; the result of which was an 

 opinion that it ran somewhere to the north-east 

 of Great Slave Lake, in a position not far from 

 that which had been speculatively assigned to it 

 by my friend Dr. Richardson and myself. Mr. 

 Charles had further been informed by an Indian 

 chief, called the " Grand Jeune Homme," whose 

 hunting grounds were in the neighbourhood of 

 Great Slave Lake, that the Thlew-ee-choh was so 

 full of rapids as to make it doubtful if boats, or 

 indeed large canoes, could descend it ; but that, 

 by pursuing a different course to a large river, 

 called Teh-Ion, such difficulties would be avoid- 



