40 REPORT OF THE SECRET AEY. 



along the Clear Water river and Athabasca lake, down Peace river 

 into Great Slave lake, and along the Mackenzie river to Fort Simpson. 

 At this place Mr. Kennicott spent a part of the first winter with the 

 officers of the Hudson's Bay Company, making excursions up the Liard 

 river to Fort Liard in autumn, and again on snow shoes in January. 

 Before the close of the same winter he went up the Mackenzie to Big 

 island, and thence northwest to Fort Rae, near the site of old Fort 

 Providence. From this point he travelled on the ice across Great 

 Slave lake to Fort Resolution, at the mouth of Peace river, where he 

 spent the summer of 1860. He next descended the Mackenzie to Peel's 

 river, and thence proceeded westward across the Rocky mountains, and 

 down the Porcupine river to the Youkon, in the vicinity of which he 

 spent the winter of 1860-61, and the summer of 1861. The winter 

 of 1861 and '62 was spent at Peel's river, and La Pierre's house in the 

 Rocky mountains, and in travelling from this point up to Fort Simpson 

 and back to Fort Good Hope on the Mackenzie. He left the last-men- 

 tioned place on the 1st of June, 1862, and reached home in October. 



During the whole exploration he was the guest of the Hudson's 

 Bay Company, the officers of which not only furnished him with free 

 transportation for the materials he collected, but also extended to him 

 in the most liberal manner the hospitalities of their several posts, and 

 facilitated in every way in their power the objects of his perilous 

 enterprise. 



The principal object of the exploration was to collect materials for 

 investigating the Zoology of the region visited. Mr. Kennicott, 

 however, also collected specimens of plants and minerals, and 

 gave considerable attention to the ethnology of the country, in ob- 

 serving the peculiarities of the various Indian tribes, and forming 

 vocabularies of the languages. He carried with him a number of 

 thermometers, and succeeded in enlisting a number of persons as 

 meteorological observers, as well as in exciting an interest in natural 

 history, and in physical phenomena, which cannot fail to be produc- 

 tive of important information respecting a region of the globe but 

 little known. 



The contributors to this exploration, besides the Smithsonian Insti- 

 tution, were the University of Michigan, the Audubon Club of Chicago, 

 and several private individuals interested in the advance of natural 

 history. 



Mr. Xantus, whose explorations in Lower California have been 



