336 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [VoL. IL 



the rivers. So said not he who had seen those rivers. Mr. Erlandson 

 had traversed the country in the spring of 1834, and represented to me 

 the utter impossibihty of carrying my instructions into effect." 



Having determined without loss of time to visit Esquimaux Bay, fully 

 six hundred miles to the south east, he set out on the 2nd day of 

 January, 1838, accompanied by Donald Henderson, Henry Hay, and two 

 Indian guides: Pierre Neven and M. Ferguson went part of the way, 

 "each driving a sled of two dogs, loaded with provisions, the other men 

 having sleds drawn by themselves." 



He arrived at Fort Smith, on Esqimaux Bay on the iddi of Feb., the 

 journey having lasted forty-five days, the rate of travel var3nng from one 

 mile to twenty miles a day. On the return to Ungava the whole party 

 suffered dreadfully. The Indians took influenza of a very severe type — 

 the guide becoming for a time delirious — provisions ran short — game was 

 not to be had, and we read, "One of our dogs being starved to death, we 

 were ultimately obliged to knock the surviving one on the head to 

 supply ourselves with what we considered, in our present circumstances, 

 'food for the gods.'" 



This journey proved the impracticability of inland water communica- 

 tion by any known route, but "having learned from the natives that a 

 river fell into the bay, about eighty miles to the eastward, that offered 

 greater facilities for carrying on the business in the interior than 

 our present communication, I ordered the men who had assisted Mr. 

 Erlandson to descend by this river, — -an enterprise which was successfully 

 accomplished." 



" At this time," he writes, " I was visited by a very grievous affliction, 

 in the loss of my beloved wife, whose untimely death left me in a more 

 wretched condition than words can express. This [1838] was truly an 

 eventful year for me ; within that space I became a husband, a father*, 

 and a widower. I traversed the Continent of America, performing a 

 voyage of some 1,500 miles by sea, and a journey by land of fully 1,200 

 miles on snow-shoes." In this year too, he records that in September he 

 was "gratified by the arrival of dispatches from Canada, brought by a 

 newly appointed junior clerk, who also gave the ' first intelligence of the 

 stirring events that had taken place in the colonies during the preceding, 

 year.'" 



Again he writes, " The favorable report of last summer respecting the- 



*John McLean, junior, the son born in Ungava, was an intimate acquaintance of my own 

 twenty-eight years ago. He was a bright intelligent young fellow, but for a long time I have, 

 heard nothing of him. 



