76 Journal of a Voyage through the 



The English Chief was very much displeased at my re- 

 proaches, and expressed himself to me in person to that 

 effect. This was the very opportunity which I wanted, to 

 make him acquainted with my dissatisfaction for some 

 time past. I stated to him that I had come a great way, 

 and at a very considerable expense, without having com- 

 pleated the object of my wishes, and that I suspected he 

 had concealed from me a principal part of what the natives 

 had told him respecting the country, lest he should be 

 obliged to follow me : that his reason for not killing game, 

 &c. was his jealousy, which likewise prevented him from 

 looking after the natives as he ought ; and that we had 

 never given him any cause for any suspicions of us. These 

 suggestions irritated him in a very high degree, and he 

 accused me of speaking ill words to him ; he denied the 

 charge of jealousy, and declared that he did not conceal 

 any thing from us ; and that as to the ill success of their 

 hunting, it arose from the nature of the country, and the 

 scarcity, which had hitherto appeared, of animals in it. 

 He concluded by informing me, that he would not accom- 

 pany me any further : that though he was without ammu- 

 nition, he could live in the same manner as the slaves (the 

 name given to the inhabitants of that part of the country), 

 and that he would remain among them. His harangue 

 was succeeded by a loud and bitter lamentation ; and his 

 relations assisted the vociferations of his grief ; though 

 they said that their tears flowed for their dead friends. I 

 did not interrupt their grief for two hours, but as I could 

 not well do without them, I was at length obliged to sooth 

 it, and induce the chief to change his resolution, which he 

 did, but with great apparent reluctance ; when we em- 

 barked as we had hitherto done. 



The articles which the fugitives had left behind them, 

 on the present occasion, were bows, arrows, snares for 

 mosse and rein-deer, and for hares; to these may be ad- 

 ded a few dishes made of bark, some skins of the martin 

 and the beaver, and old beaver robes, with a small robe 

 made of the skin of the lynx. Their canoes were coarsely 

 made of the bark of the spruce-fir, and will carry two or 

 three people. I ordered my men to remove them to the 

 shade, and gave most of the other articles to the young 

 Indians. The English Chief would not accept of any of 

 them. In the place, and as the purchase of them, I left 

 some cloth, some small knives, a file, two fire-steels, a 



