TORONTO TO ATHABASCA LANDING. 9 
were all essential qualities. These were obtained from 
the Peterboro’ Canoe Company, who furnished us with 
two beautiful varnished cedar canoes, eighteen feet in 
length, and capable of carrying two thousand pounds 
each, while weighing only one hundred and twenty 
pounds. Arrangements had also been made to have a 
nineteen foot basswood canoe, used during the previous 
summer, and two men in readiness at Fort McMurray on 
the Athabasca River. 
Four other canoemen were chosen to complete the 
party, three of them being Iroquois experts from 
Caughnawaga, Quebec. These three were brothers, named 
Pierre, Louis and Michel French. Pierre was a veteran 
canoeman, being as much at home in a boiling rapid as 
on the calmest water. For some years he had acted as 
ferryman at Caughnawaga, and only recently had made 
a reputation for himself by running the Lachine Rapids 
on Christmas day, out of sheer bravado. His brother 
Louis had won some distinction also through having 
accompanied Lord Wolseley as a voyageur on his 
Egyptian campaigns: while Michel, the youngest and 
smallest of the three, was known to be a good steady 
fellow, boasting of the same distinction as his brother 
Louis. 
The other man, a half-breed named John Flett, was 
engaged at Prince Albert, in the North-West. He was 
highly recommended, not so much as a canoeman, but as 
being an expert portager of great experience in north- 
ern travel, and also an Eskimo linguist. 
The two men, James Corrigal and Francois Maurice, 
who through the kindness of Mr. Moberly, the officer 
of the Hudson’s Bay Company at Isle-a-la-Crosse, were 
