262 NARRATIVE OF THE EXPEDITION. 



for tlie men, who were on the push and trot all day, embarking 

 and debarking continually on lakes, or scrambling, with their 

 burdens and canoes, over elevations or through morasses. It 

 was particularly severe on the soldiers, who are ill-prepared for 

 this kind of toil. 



The chief Quelle Plat, with some companions of the Mukan- 

 dwa band, had overtaken us, at the Lake of the Isle, and came 

 and encamped beside us. I invited him to sup with us, and the 

 evening was passed in conversing with him on various topics. I 

 found him a man of understanding and comprehensive views, 

 who was well acquainted with the history of his people. It was 

 twelve o'clock before these conversations ended, when he got up 

 to go to his camp fire. With him there sat Majegabowee,-' a tall, 

 gaunt, and savage-looking man of Eed Eiver, who scarcely 

 uttered a word, but sat a silent listener to the superior powers of 

 conversation and reflection of his chief. But I could not look at 

 this person without a sense of horror, when I reflected that in 

 him I beheld the murderer of Gov. Semple, of the Hudson's 

 Bay Territory, a circumstance which I have previously adverted 

 to, while at Leech Lake.f 



Bidding adieu to the Leech Lake chief the next morning at sun- 

 rise (4 h, 45 m.), after giving him a lancet, with directions to vacci- 

 nate any of his people who had been overlooked, I embarked on 

 the Kaginogamaug. This is a beautiful lake, with sylvan shores 

 and crystal water, some four or five miles long. We were just 

 forty minutes, with full paddles, in passing it. The outlet is 

 narrow, and overhung with alders. The width is not over six 

 feet, with good depth, but the turns are so sudden, and the stream 

 so thickly overhung with foliage, that the use of the axe and the 

 paddle as an excavator were often necessary. It then expands 

 into a lake, called Little Yermilion, which is fringed with a 

 growth of birch and aspen, with pines in the distance. Its outlet 

 is fully doubled in width, and we had henceforth no more embar- 

 rassment in descending. This outlet is pursued about eight 



* The Fore-standing man. From the verb viaja, to go, ninabow, I stand, and 

 izzee, a person or man. 



•}• For an account of this transaction, vide Reports of the Disputes between the 

 Earl of Selkirk and the Northwest Company, at the assizes held at York, Upper 

 Canada, Oct. 1818. 1 vol. 8vo. pp. 664. Montreal, Casie & Mower, 1819. 



