WENTZEL'S EXPLANATION.
After you sent me back from the mouth of the Copper-Mine River and I had overtaken the Leader, Guides, and Hunters, on the fifth day, leaving the sea-coast, as well as our journey up the River, they always expressed the same desire of fulfilling their promises, although somewhat dissatisfied at being exposed to privation while on our return from a scarcity of animals for, as I have already stated in my first communication from Moose-Deer Island, we had been eleven days with no other food but tripe de roche.

In the course of this time an Indian with his wife and child, who were travelling in company with us, were left in the rear and are since supposed to have perished through want, as no intelligence had been received of them at Fort Providence in December last.

On the seventh day after I had joined the Leader, etc.etc., and journeying on together, all the Indians excepting Petit Pied and Bald-Head left me to seek their families and crossed Point Lake at the Crow's Nest, where Humpy had promised to meet his brother Ekehcho (Akaitcho the Leader) with the families but did not fulfil, nor did any of my party of Indians know where to find them, for we had frequently made fires to apprise them of our approach yet none appeared in return as answers.

This disappointment as might be expected served to increase the ill-humour of the Leader and party, the brooding of which (agreeably to Indian custom) was liberally discharged on me, in bitter reproach for having led them from their families and exposed them to dangers and hardships which, but for my influence, they said they might have spared themselves.

Nevertheless they still continued to profess the sincerest desire of meeting your wishes in making caches of provisions and remaining until a late season on the road that leads from Fort Enterprise to Fort Providence, through which the Expedition-men had travelled so often the year before, remarking however at the same time that they had not the least hopes of ever seeing one person return from the Expedition.