400 Thirty Years 
ined, and found to be in excellent order, except the 
powder in one of the magazines, which had become 
caked from damp. I had ordered a supply of iron- 
work, knives, and beads, for the sea voyage from Fort 
Simpson ; they had arrived some days before us, and 
with our stock thus augmented, we were well furnished 
with presents for the natives, The packages being 
finished on the 27th, the boats received their respec- 
tive ladings, and we were rejoiced to find that each 
stowed her cargo well, and with her crew embarked 
floated as buoyantly as our most sanguine wishes had 
anticipated. The heavy stores, however, were after- 
_ wards removed into a bateau that was to be taken to 
the mouth of the river, to prevent the smaller boats 
from receiving injury in passing over the shoals. 
We waited one day to make some pounded meat 
we had brought into pemmican. In the meantime 
the seamen enlarged the foresail of the Reliance. 
The letters which I received from the Athabasca 
department informed me that the things I had re- 
quired from the Company in February last, wouldsbe 
duly forwarded ; they likewise contained a very dif- 
ferent version of the story which had led us. to suppose 
that Captain Parry was passing the winter on the 
northern coast. We now learned that the Indians 
had only seen some pieces of wood recently cut, and a 
deer that had been killed by an arrow ; these things 
