204 



A JOURNEY TO THE SHORES 



The communications which the chief and the guides then gave 

 respecting the route to the Copper-Mine River, and its course to the 

 sea, coincided in every material point with the statements which 

 were made by Boileau and Black -meat at Chipewyan, but they 

 differed in their descriptions of the coast. The information, how- 

 ever, collected from both sources was very vague and unsatisfactory. 

 None of his tribe had been more than three days' march along the 

 sea-coast to the eastward of the river's mouth. 



As the water was unusually high this season, the Indian guides 

 recommended our going by a shorter route to the Copper-Mine 

 River than that they had first proposed to Mr. Wentzel, and they 

 assigned as a reason for the change, that the rein-deer would be 

 sooner found upon this track. They then drew a chart of the pro- 

 posed route on the floor with charcoal, exhibiting a chain of twenty- 

 five small lakes extending towards the north, about one half of them 

 connected by a river which flows into Slave Lake, near Fort Provi- 

 dence. One of the guides, named Keskarrah, drew the Copper- 

 Mine River, running through the Upper Lake in a westerly direction 

 towards the Great Bear Lake, and then northerly to the sea. The 

 other guide drew the river in a straight line to the sea from the above- 

 mentioned place, but, after some dispute, admitted the correctness of 

 the first delineation. The latter was elder brother to Akaitcho, and 

 he said that he had accompanied Mr. Hearne on his journey, and 

 though very young at the time, still remembered many of the circum- 

 stances, and particularly the massacre committed by the Indians on 

 the Esquimaux. 



They pointed out another lake to the southward of the river, about 

 three days' journey distant from it, on which the chief proposed the next 

 winter's establishment should be formed, as the rein-deer would pass 

 there in the autumn and spring. Its waters contained fish, and there 

 was a sufficiency of wood for building as well as for the winter's con- 

 sumption. These were important considerations, and determined 



