FATE OF WILLIAMSON. 445 



his fire. He did little duty of any kind, and 

 was treated with uniform kindness by the whole 

 of the people, who called him Poor David, 

 seeming to regard him as one in deep distress of 

 mind, whom they were bound to pity. As often 

 happens to those who go astray, he was but a 

 short distance from the fishery he had left, and 

 to which, as was conjectured from his having 

 followed a track made by some of our men but 

 two days before the ice broke up, he was en- 

 deavouring to return. 



The weather since our departure had been 



worse than the Indians ever remembered ; and 



they had endured in consequence more than 



usual misery and suffering in the privation of 



food. Mr. JVFLeod declared that I would not 



recognise them, unless they had wonderfully 



recovered since they had fallen in with the deer. 



The whole of the country north and east of 



Great Slave Lake had been deluged with rain, 



and blighted by frost and snow. The same thing 



seems to have happened last winter, which was 



unusually mild to the southward, and even in 



the M c Kenzie, as compared with what we 



found it; whence it may perhaps be inferred 



that the bays and inlets of the sea coast were 



superabundantly charged with ice, the influence 



of which on the atmosphere would, of course, 



vary with the locality. 



