TORONTO TO ATHABASCA LANDING. 9 



were all essential qualities. These were obtained from 

 the Peterboro' Canoe Company, who furnished us with 

 two beautiful varnished cedar canoes, eighteen feet in 

 length, and capable of carrying two thousand pounds 

 each, while weighing only one hundred and twenty 

 pounds. Arrangements had also been made to have a 

 nineteen foot basswood canoe, used during the previous 

 summer, and two men in readiness at Fort McMurray on 

 the Athabasca River. 



Four other canoemen were chosen to complete the 

 party, three of them being Iroquois experts from 

 Caughnawaga, Quebec. These three were brothers, named 

 Pierre, Louis and Michel French. Pierre was a veteran 

 eanoeman, being as much at home in a boiling rapid as 

 on the calmest water. For some years he had acted as 

 ferryman at Caughnawaga, and only recently had made 

 a reputation for himself by running the Lachine Rapids 

 on Christmas day, out of sheer bravado. His brother 

 Louis had won some distinction also through having 

 accompanied Lord Wolseley as a voyageur on his 

 Egyptian campaigns ; while Michel, the youngest and 

 smallest of the three, was known to be a good steady 

 fellow, boasting of the same distinction as his brother 

 Louis. 



The other man, a half-breed named John Flett, was 

 engaged at Prince Albert, in the North- West. He was 

 highly recommended, not so much as a canoeman, but as 

 being an expert portager of great experience in north- 

 ern travel, and also an Eskimo linguist. 



The two men, James Corrigal and Fra^ois Maurice, 

 who through the kindness of Mr. Moberly, the officer 

 of the Hudson's Bay Company at Isle-a-la-Crosse, were 



