54< DIFFICULTY OF PROCURING 



country, — at length consented to be my follower. 

 The example once set was soon imitated, and 

 others, more or less qualified, completed my list 

 to within two of the complement. Two days 

 sufficed to equip them ; and as a large supply of 

 stores, together with sixty bags of pemmican 

 and two new boats, or batteaux, were already at 

 Cumberland House, I despatched Mr. King, 

 with written instructions and fifteen men, to 

 precede me to that post. I remained behind to 

 secure, if possible, another steersman, and a mid- 

 dleman for a canoe, with which it was my inten- 

 tion to push on, by the Athabasca, to Great Slave 

 Lake ; whence I hoped a route might be found to 

 the Thlew-ee-choh, and where at all events an 

 eligible place might be selected for our winter 

 residence. About the same time Mr. Christie 

 and several other gentlemen took their departure 

 for York factory, with a promise to provide me, 

 if possible, with an Esquimaux interpreter, either 

 in the person of my old friend Augustus, who 

 was expected from the Labrador coast, or in 

 that of a lad of the name of Dunning, then at 

 Churchill, and represented by Governor Simpson 

 as equal to the task. 



Messrs. Cameron, Lewis, Ross, and myself, 

 were now the only persons left at the depot ; and 

 I may conscientiously say that I almost counted 

 the hours, in my anxiety for the arrival of the 



