Seeking Pond’s Outlet 8

him as a leader received its final sanction from his thought-
fulness and success as a provider.

‘The weather was cloudy and the wind changeable, but
nevertheless they were pestered by mosquitoes, though in
a great measure surrounded by ice. The next day it was
possible to make a large island six miles west where fish,
cranberries, and small spring onions were plentiful. M. Le
Roux, who had gone back to the camp of the eighteenth,
where there was good fishing, was now sent for. A southerly
wind drove the ice northward, and at 2 am.. Le Roux and
his people arrived, after having been severely buffeted by
the wind. At 5 p.m. the ice had been driven past to the
north, and the flotilla steered west fifteen miles through
broken ice to a cluster of small islands three miles from the
mainland on the north side of the lake. The intervening
space was completely obstructed; five large and two small
caribou, however, were killed on a near-by island, which
was accordingly named Ile de Carreboeuf.

Mackenzie frequently devoted himself to careful astro-
nomical observations, but these, while recorded with
frequency in his ‘fournals, are not quoted here except in
one or two instances, as he states that he afterwards realised
that his astronomical knowledge was not sufficiently accurate
to make his records on this trip reliable.

He sat up the whole of Sunday night to observe the setting
and rising of the sun. The orb was beneath the horizon four
hours and twenty-two minutes and rose north 20° east by
the compass. It, however, froze so hard that during the
sun’s disappearance the water was covered with ice half
an inch thick.

Coasting thirteen miles north-west along the edge of the
ice brought them to an island where M. Le Roux’s people
buried two bags of pemmican against their return. Leaving