388 Thirty Years 
We were here furnished with a canoe by Mr Smith, 
and a bowman, to act as our guide ; and having left 
Fort Chipewyan on the 5th, we arrived, on the 4th of 
July, at Norway Honse. Finding at this place, that 
canoes were about to go down to Montreal, I gave all 
our Canadian voyagers their discharges, and sent them 
by those vessels, furnishing them with orders on the 
Agent of the Hudson’s Bay Company for the amount 
of their wages. We carried Augustus down to York 
such promptitude and liberality the assistance your ‘truly dreadful 
situation required. But the party of Indians, on whom I had placed 
the utmost confidence and dependence; was Humpy and the White 
Capot Guide, with their sons and several of the discharged Hunters from 
the Expedition. This party was well-disposed, and readily promised 
to collect provisions for the possible return of the Expedition, provid- 
ed ‘they could get a supply of ammunition from Fort Providence ; for 
when I came up with them, they were actually starving, and converting 
old axes into ball, having no other substitute—this was unlucky. Yet 
they were well inclined, and I expected to find means at Fort Provi- 
dence to send them a supply, in which I was, however, disappointed, for 
I found that establishment quite destitute of necessaries ; and then, 
shortly after I had left them, they had the misfortune of losing three 
of their hunters, who were drowned in Marten Lake; this accident 
was, of all others, the most fatal that could have happened—a truth 
which no one, who has the least knowledge of the Indian character, 
will deny; and as they were nearly connected by relationship to the 
Leader, Humpy, and White Capot Guide, the three leading men of this 
part of the Copper Indian Tribe, it had the effect of unhinging (if I 
may use the expression,) the minds of all these families, and finally 
destroying all the fond hopes I had so ranguinely conceived of their 
