He recommended my writing to the partner in charge of that department, requesting him to collect all the intelligence he could and to provide guides and hunters from the tribe best acquainted with the country through which we proposed to travel.
To our great regret Mr.Stuart expressed much doubt as to our prevailing upon any experienced Canadian voyagers to accompany us to the sea in consequence of their dread of the Esquimaux who, he informed us, had already destroyed the crew of one canoe which had been sent under Mr.
Livingstone to open a trading communication with those who reside near the mouth of the Mackenzie River; and he also mentioned that the same tribe had driven away the canoes under Mr.Clark's direction, going to them on a similar object, to which circumstance I have alluded in my remarks at Isle a la Crosse.
This was unpleasant information but we were comforted by Mr.Stuart's assurance that himself and his partners would use every endeavour to remove their fears as well as to promote our views in every other way; and he undertook as a necessary part of our equipment in the spring to prepare the bark and other materials for constructing two canoes at this post.
Mr.Stuart informed us that the residents at Fort Chipewyan, from the recent sickness of their Indian hunters, had been reduced to subsist entirely on the produce of their fishing-nets, which did not yield more than a bare sufficiency for their support; and he kindly proposed to us to remain with him until the spring but, as we were most desirous to gain all the information we could as early as possible and Mr.Stuart assured us that the addition of three persons would not be materially felt in their large family at Chipewyan, we determined on proceeding thither and fixed on the 22nd for our departure.
Pierre au Calumet receives its name from the place where the stone is procured, of which many of the pipes used by the Canadians and Indians are made.

It is a clayey limestone, impregnated with various shells.

The house, which is built on the summit of a steep bank rising almost perpendicular to the height of one hundred and eighty feet, commands an extensive prospect along this fine river and over the plains which stretch out several miles at the back of it, bounded by hills of considerable height and apparently better furnished with wood than the neighbourhood of the fort where the trees grow very scantily.

There had been an establishment belonging to the Hudson's Bay Company on the opposite bank of the river but it was abandoned in December last, the residents not being able to procure provision from their hunters having been disabled by the epidemic sickness which has carried off one-third of the Indians in these parts.

They belong to the Northern Crees, a name given them from their residing in the Athabasca department.