234 A JOURNEY TO THE 



1771. South West. Several of the Indians being out of order, we 

 ecem "• j^^^^g ^3^^ short days journies. 



From the first to the thirteenth, we walked along a course 

 of small lakes, joined to each other by small rivers, or creeks, 

 that have communication with Anaw'd Lake. 



In our way we caught daily a few fish by angling, and saw 

 many beaver houses ; but these were generally in so diflScult a 

 situation, and had so many stones in the composition of them, 

 that the Indians killed but few, and that at a great expence of 

 labour and tools. 



13th. On the thirteenth, one of the Indians killed two deer, which 

 were the first that we had seen since the twentieth [223] of 

 October. So that during a period of near two months, we had 

 lived on the dried meat that we had prepared at Point Lake, 

 and a few fish; of which the latter was not very considerable in 

 quantity, except what was caught at Anaw'd Lake. It is true, 

 we also caught a few rabbits, and at times the wood-partridges 

 were so plentiful, that the Indians killed considerable numbers 

 of them with their bows and arrows; but the number of mouths 

 was so great, that all which was caught from our leaving Point 

 Lake, though if enumerated, they might appear very consider- 

 able, would not have afforded us all a bare subsistence ; for 

 though I and some others experienced no real want, yet there 

 were many in our company who could scarcely be said to live, 

 and would not have existed at all, had it not been for the dry 

 meat we had with us. 



When we left the above-mentioned lakes we shaped a 



24th. course more to the Southward, and on the twenty-fourth, 

 arrived at the North side of the great Athapuscow Lake.^ In 



[* The lake which he has now reached and which he calls Athapuscow Lake, 

 Arathapescow Lake of the Cook and Pennant maps, is Great Slave Lake of the 

 present maps, or the Slave Lake of Alexander Mackenzie, and not the lake 

 now known as Athabasca Lake ; and the point at which he reached it was 

 somewhere east of the entrance to the North Arm. According to I'Abbe 

 Petitot, the name Athabasca is a Cree word, referring to a reedy, grassy mouth 

 of a river, and means " The Herbaceous Network." It does not appear to have 



