224 A JOURNEY TO THE 



1771. consider the extent of ground which we walked over in that 

 ^^° ^'^* time, such a number would not have been any proof of the 

 martins being very plentiful. 



Except a few martins ; wolves, quiquehatches, foxes, and 

 otters, are the chief furrs to be met with in those parts, and 

 few of the Northern Indians chuse to kill either the wolf 

 or the quiquehatch, under a notion that they are something 

 more than common animals. Indeed, I have known some of 

 them so bigotted to this opinion, that having by chance killed 

 a quiquehatch by a gun which had been set for a fox, they have 

 left it where it was killed, and would not take off its skin. 

 Notwithstanding this [210] silly notion, which is too frequently 

 to be observed among those people, it generally happens that 

 there are some in every gang who are less scrupulous, so that 

 none of those furrs are ever left to rot ; and even those who 

 make a point of not killing the animals themselves, are ready 

 to receive their skins from other Indians, and carry them to 

 the Fort for trade. 

 30th. By the thirtieth of October, all our clothing, snowshoes, 

 and temporary sledges, being completed, we once more began 

 November, to prepare for moving, and on the following day set out, and 

 walked five or six miles to the Southward. 

 5th. From the first to the fifth of November we walked on the 

 ice of a large lake, which, though very considerable both in 

 length and breadth, is not distinguished by any general name ; 

 on which account I gave it the name of No Name Lake.^ On 

 the South side of this lake we found some wood, which was 



[^ This lake is identified by Sir John Richardson as the Providence Lake 

 of Franklin and of the present maps, but it is more likely to be Mackay Lake, 

 which is much more nearly the size of lake here described, and the description 

 of the woods on the south shore agrees closely with the description of Lake 

 Mackay given by Mr. Warburton Pike, who visited that region in 1890. This 

 determination agrees also with the statement of Hearne, that No Name Lake 

 lies but a short distance north of the edge of the " main woods/' for the nor- 

 thern edge of the forest crosses the country from east to west, a few miles south 

 of this lake. On Caspar Whitney's map of his trip through the barren grounds 

 this lake is called King or Grizzly Bear Lake. Mr. C Harding, the ofificer in 



