THe ReTurn anv A Fresu Srart 77

therefore decided to go up the Peace River as far as he could in the autumn of 1792, to spend the winter there, and to continue in the spring as soon as the ice went out. Remaining only a few days at Chipewyan, he left the fort on October 10, and made his way by the 13th to Peace Point on Peace River, where the Crees and the Beaver Indians had settled their dif- ferences and given the riverits name. Since his arrival in Athabaska trade had been opened for some distance up the Peace, and the course of the river had been already surveyed as far as the first post upstream, which, though only four years old, had already earned the name of the Old Establishment. His detailed obser- vations begin from this place. On the zoth, at a new post under a trader named Finlay, Mackenzie met for the first time some Indians of the Peace River region. They had gathered to secure their outfits for the winter’s hunt, forty-two hunters and their families, and they were “animated with the prospect of again indulging themselves in the luxury of rum, of which they had been deprived since the begin-

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