[H] The Calimut is a long ornamented stem of a pipe, much in use among all the tribes of Indians who know the use of tobacco. It is particularly used in all cases of ceremony, either in making war or peace; at all public entertainments, orations, &c.
[I] No convenient opportunity offered during my last Journey, except one, on the 22d March 1771; and as nothing material had happened during that part of my Journey, I thought there was not any necessity for sending an extract of my Journal; I therefore only sent a Letter to the Governor, informing him of my situation with respect to latitude and longitude, and some account of the usage which I received from the natives, &c.
[J] By mistake in my former Journal and Draft called Arathapefcow.
[K] This was barely probable, as Matonabbee at that time had not any information of this Journey being set on foot, much less had he received orders to join me at the place and time here appointed; and had we accidentally met, he would by no means have undertaken the Journey without first going to the Factory, and there making his agreement with the Governor; for no Indian is fond of performing any particular service for the English, without first knowing what is to be his reward. At the same time, had I taken that rout on my out-set, it would have carried me some hundreds of miles out of my road. See my Track on the Map in the Winter 1770, and the Spring 1771.
[L] I was not provided with instruments for cutting on stone; but for form-sake, I cut my name, date of the year, &c., on a piece of board that had been one of the Indian's targets, and placed it in a heap of stones on a small eminence near the entrance of the river, on the South side.
[M] There is certainly no harm in making out all Instructions in the fullest manner, yet it must be allowed that those two parts might have been omitted with great propriety; for as neither Middleton, Ellis, nor Christopher were able to penetrate far enough up those inlets to discover any kind of herbage except moss and grass, much less woods, it was not likely those parts were so materially altered for the better since their times, as to make it worth my while to attempt a farther discovery of them; and especially as I had an opportunity, during my second Journey, of proving that the woods do not reach the sea-coast by some hundreds of miles in the parallel of Chesterfield's Inlet. And as the edge of the woods to the Northward always tends to the Westward, the distance must be greatly increased in the latitude of Wager Strait. Those parts have long since been visited by the Company's servants, and are within the known limits of their Charter; consequently require no other form of possession.
[N] See the preceding Note.
[O] The Continent of America is much wider than many people imagine, particularly Robson, who thought that the Pacific Ocean was but a few days journey from the West coast of Hudson's Bay. This, however, is so far from being the case, that when I was at my greatest Western distance, upward of five hundred miles from Prince of Wales's Fort, the natives, my guides, well knew that many tribes of Indians lay to the West of us, and they knew no end to the land in that direction; nor have I met with any Indians, either Northern or Southern, that ever had seen the sea to the Westward. It is, indeed, well known to the intelligent and well-informed part of the Company's servants, that an extensive and numerous tribe of Indians, called E-arch-e-thinnews, whose country lies far West of any of the Company's or Canadian settlements, must have traffic with the Spaniards on the West side of the Continent; because some of the Indians who formerly traded to York Fort, when at war with those people, frequently found saddles, bridles, muskets, and many other articles, in their possession, which were undoubtedly of Spanish manufactory.
I have seen several Indians who have been so far West as to cross the top of that immense chain of mountains which run from North to South of the continent of America. Beyond those mountains all rivers run to the Westward. I must here observe, that all the Indians I ever heard relate their excursions in that country, had invariably got so far to the South, that they did not experience any Winter, nor the least appearance of either frost or snow, though sometimes they have been absent eighteen months, or two years.[21]
[21] In the year 1745 Anthony Hendry, under instructions from the Hudson's Bay Company, had travelled inland from York Factory to the upper waters of the Saskatchewan River, where he met the E-arch-e-thinnews or Blackfeet Indians.