_Monday, 24._–Our nets this morning produced fourteen white fish, ten
pikes, and a couple of trouts. At five we embarked with a light breeze
from the South, when we hoisted sail, and proceeded slowly, as our
Indians had not come up with us. At eleven we went on shore to prepare
the kettle, and dry the nets; at one we were again on the water. At
four in the afternoon, we perceived a large canoe with a sail, and two
small ones ahead; we soon came up with them, when they proved to be
M. Le Roux and an Indian, with his family, who were on a hunting party,
and had been out twenty-five days. It was his intention to have gone as
far as the river, to leave a letter for me, to inform me of his
situation. He had seen no more Indians where I had left him; but had
made a voyage to Lac la Marte, where he met eighteen small canoes of the
Slave Indians, from whom he obtained five pack of skins, which were
principally those of the marten. There were four Beaver Indians among
them, who had bartered the greatest part of the above mentioned articles
with them, before his arrival. They informed him that their relations
had more skins, but that they were afraid to venture with them, though
they had been informed that people were to come with goods to barter for
them. He gave these people a pair of ice chisels each, and other
articles, and sent them away to conduct their friends to the Slave Lake,
where he was to remain during the succeeding winter.
We set three nets and in a short time caught twenty fish of different
kinds. In the dusk of the evening, the English chief arrived with a
most pitiful account that he had like to have been drowned in trying to
follow us; and that the other men had also a very narrow escape. Their
canoe, he said, had broken on the swell, at some distance from the
shore, but as it was flat, they had with his assistance been able to
save themselves. He added, that he left them lamenting, lest they
should not overtake me, if I did not wait for them; he also expressed
his apprehensions that they would not be able to repair their canoe.
This evening I gave my men some rum to cheer them after their fatigues.
