[16b] Also Akaitcho.
"As to my not leaving a letter at Fort Enterprise, it was because, by some mischance, you had forgot to give me paper when we parted[16c].
[16c] I certainly offered Mr. Wentzel some paper when he quitted us, but he declined it, having then a note-book; and Mr. Back gave him a pencil.
"I, however, wrote this news on a plank, in pencil, and placed it in the top of your former bedstead, where I left it. Since it has not been found there, some Indians must have gone to the house after my departure, and destroyed it. These details, Sir, I have been induced to enter into (rather unexpectedly) in justification of myself, and hope it will be satisfactory."
In a subsequent conversation he stated to me, that the two Indians, who were actually with him at Fort Enterprise, whilst he remained there altering his canoe, were prevented from hunting; one by an accidental lameness, the other by the fear of meeting alone some of the Dog-Rib Indians.
We were here furnished with a canoe by Mr. Smith, and a bowman, to act as our guide; and having left Fort Chipewyan on the 5th, we arrived, on the 4th of July, at Norway House. Finding at this place, that canoes were about to go down to Montreal, I gave all our Canadian voyagers their discharges, and sent them by those vessels, furnishing them with orders on the Agent of the Hudson's Bay Company, for the amount of their wages. We carried Augustus down to York Factory, where we arrived on the 14th of July, and were received with every mark of attention and kindness by Mr. Simpson, the Governor, Mr. McTavish, and, indeed, by all the officers of the United Companies. And thus terminated our long, fatiguing, and disastrous travels in North America, having journeyed by water and by land (including our navigation of the Polar Sea,) five thousand five hundred and fifty miles.
THE END.
Route of the Expedition from York Factory to Cumberland House