308 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
Hendry was the actual discoverer of the South Saskatchewan. Certainly 
his is the first unquestionably authentic description of the river, as well 
as of the great plain lying between the North and South Saskatchewan. 
After leaving York Factory, Hendry’s course lay up the Hayes 
river to what was then called Attick-Sagohan or Deer Lake, now known 
as Knee lake. Even this far there is no record of any earlier explora- 
tion, though it is quite possible that some of the men of the Hudson’s 
Bay Company may have reached Knee or Oxford lakes on trading ex- 
peditions. There is a note, however, on the margin of Hendry’s journal, 
by Andrew Graham, afterward factor at York, in which the significant 
statement is made that Hendry was “the first person who ventured 
inland.” This lends at least some colour to the argument, advanced 
by opponents of the company, that the whole story of Kellsey’s journey 
was a fabrication. 
From Knee lake it becomes for a time a little more difficult to fol- 
low Hendry’s movements. The natural supposition would be that he 
followed the afterwards familiar route by way of Oxford lake, Echima- 
mish river and the Playgreen lakes to Lake Winnipegs and this supposi- 
tion gains support from the fact that he presently mentions a lake which 
he calls Christianaux—one of the old French names for Lake Winnipeg. 
His distances, however, put such a theory out of court; and even if that 
were not the case, his description of Christianaux lake cannot be made 
to fit Winnipeg. He makes the explicit statement that in crossing the 
lake he “passed 22 woody islands.” As everyone knows, the northern 
end of Lake Winnipeg is singularly free of islands. On the other hand, 
it took him two days to cross Christianaux lake, and he makes the dis- 
tance fifty-one miles. Admitting that his distances may have been some- 
what exaggerated, (and as will be seen presently the probabilities point 
the other way), there is no lake of this size—on the maps—anywhere 
between York Factory and Lake Winnipeg. It happens, however, that 
between Knee and Oxford lakes and Cross lake on the Nelson lies a con- 
siderable extent of country that has never been explored; or rather *t 
was supposed that it had never been explored. One or two small lakes 
appear on the maps, but they are purely conjectural. Both the Nelson 
river and the Hayes route have been carefully surveyed in recent years, 
but no officer of the Geological Survey has ever yet traversed the country 
between Oxford lake and the Nelson. So far as was known, up toa short 
time ago, no direct canoe route existed from Oxford lake to the Nelson. 
f: 
* Hendry may have got the name from DeLisle’s Carte du Canada, 1703, or 
one of the other maps of the period on which Christianaux, or Christineaux, 
applies to a suppositious lake, north of Lake Nipigon, and connected with 
Lac des Assenipoules—one of the several names applied to Lake Winnipeg. 
