Sunday 19.

JOURNAL GF A VOYAGE THROUGH THE

The weather became cold towards the afternoon, with the appearance
of rain, and we landed for the night at feyenin the evening The Indians
killed eight geefe. During the greater part of the day I walked with the
Englifh chief, and found it very difagreeable and fatiguing. Though
the country is fo elevated, it was one continual morafs, except on the
fummits of fome barren hills. As I carried my hanger in my hand, I
frequently examined if any part of the ground was in a flate of thaw,
but could never force the blade into it, beyond the depth of fix.or eight
iches. ‘The face of the high land, towards the river, is in fome places
rocky, and in others a mixture of fand and ftone, veined with a kind of

red earth, with which the natives bedaub themfelves.

It rained, and blew hard from the North, till eight in the morning,
‘when we difcovered that our conduétor had efcaped. I was, indeed,

furprifed at his honefty, as he left the moofe-{kin which I had given him
for a covering, and went off in his fhirt, though the weather was very
cold. JI inquired of the Indians if they had given him any caufe of
offence, or had obferved any recent difpofition in him to defert us, but
they aflured me that they had not in any inflance difpleafed him: at the
fame time they recolleCted that he had expreffed his apprehenfions of

being taken away as a flave; and his alarms were probably increafed

on the preceding day, when he faw them kill the two rein-deer with fo
much readinefs. In the afternoon the weather became fine and clear,
when we faw large flights of geefe with their young ones, and the hunters
killed twenty-two of them. As they had at this time caft their feathers,
they could not fly. They were of a fmall kind, and much inferior in
fize to thole that frequent the vicinity of Athabafca. At eight, we took
our