318 JOURNEY TO THE SHORES 
guides then gave respecting the route to the 
Copper-Mine River, and: its course to the sea, 
coincided in every material point with the state- 
ments which were made by Boileau and Black- 
meat at Chipewyan, but they differed in their 
descriptions of the coast. The information, how- 
ever, collected from both sources was very vague 
and unsatisfactory. None of his tribe had been 
more than three day’s march along the sea-coast 
to the eastward of the river’s mouth. 
As the water was unusually high this season, 
the Indian guides recommended our going by a 
shorter route to the Copper-Mine River than that 
they had first proposed to Mr. Wentzel, and they 
assigned as a reason for the change, that the 
rein-deer would be sooner found upon this track. 
They then drew a chart of the proposed route on 
the floor with charcoal, exhibiting a chain of 
twenty-five small lakes extending towards the 
north, about one half of them connected by a 
river which flows into Slave Lake, near Fort 
Providence. One of the guides, named Keskarrah, 
drew the Copper-Mine River, running through 
the Upper Lake in a westerly direction towards 
the Great Bear Lake, and then northerly to the 
sea. The other guide drew the river in a straight 
line to the sea from the above-mentioned place, 
- but, after some dispute, admitted the correctness 
