NORTHERN OCEAN 281 



[285] On the seventh we crossed a part of Thee-lee-aza 1772. 

 River : at which time the small Northern deer were remarkably -th? ' 

 plentiful, but the moose began to be very scarce, as none were 

 killed after the third. 



On the twelfth, we saw several swans flying to the North- 12th. 

 ward ; they were the first birds of passage we had seen that 

 Spring, except a few snow-birds, which always precede the 

 migrating birds, and consequently are with much propriety 

 called the harbingers of Spring. The swans also precede all 

 the other species of water-fowl, and migrate so early in the 

 season, that they find no open water but at the falls of rivers, 

 where they are readily met, and sometimes shot, in consider- 

 able numbers. 



On the fourteenth, we arrived at another part of Thee-lee- 14th- 

 aza River,^ and pitched our tents not far from some families 

 of strange Northern Indians, who had been there some time 

 snaring deer, and who were all so poor as not to have one gun 

 among them. 



The villains belonging to my crew were so far from ad- 

 ministering to their relief, that they robbed them of almost 

 every useful article in their possession ; and to complete their 

 cruelty, the men joined themselves in parties of six, eight, or ten 

 in a gang, and dragged several of their young women to a little 

 distance from their tents, [286] where they not only ravished 

 them, but otherwise ill-treated them, and that in so barbarous 

 a manner, as to endanger the lives of one or two of them. 

 Humanity on this, as well as on several other similar occasions 

 during my residence among those wretches, prompted me to 

 upbraid them with their barbarity ; but so far were my remon- 

 strances from having the desired effect, that they afterwards 

 made no scruple of telling me in the plainest terms, that if any 



[^ Thee-lee-aza River is called Theetinah River (Blue Fish River ?) on 

 the Pennant map, and Petitot speaks of it as a tributary of T'ezus or 

 Snowdrift River, which also empties into the south side of Great Slave 

 Lake.] 



