DIFFICULTY IN TRACING OUR ROUTE. ^77 



have brought you some pemmican and a little 

 cold water, Sir." 



As the Indians did not make their appear- 

 ance by the following noon, the men were sent 

 to light large fires with the moss, which by that 

 time was dry on the neighbouring hills; a well- 

 understood signal, which, if they were within 

 sight, would immediately bring them in. I was 

 the more anxious about this, as, without their 

 assistance, on a lake of such magnitude as the 

 one before us, and so full of intricacies as 

 to have more than once, on the expedition of 

 last year, bewildered Maufelly himself, we 

 could not hope to find the way correctly, at 

 least without vexatious delays and many useless 

 perambulations. In summer there would have 

 been perhaps little difficulty ; but it was now 

 like a strange country, for so complete is their 

 transformation that the natives themselves, ac- 

 customed as they are to the character of the 

 country, sometimes go astray. To have followed 

 the main western shore would have greatly in- 

 creased the distance, and, indeed, would not 

 have answered, since the Thlew-ee-choh lay to 

 the eastward of north, and at a part where the 

 traverse is so wide that a free horizon intervenes 

 between the opposite shores. Under these cir- 

 cumstances I determined, if the Indians should 

 not come, to make as straight a course as was 



t 3 



