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state up with his body; he had his watch but he had no compass. They had all three pocket knives, & tinderboxes with flint & steel. He M^r F was very bare of clothes, and in this respect his men were better off than himself. He had however, as a good three point blanket, and his men had also each one. For some time back they had, in co[n]templation of such an expedition, economised as much as possible in the consumption of the pemican and the flour meal that was served out to them, and had laid by all they could from their scanty allowance for to form a stock for such their journey & of which when they started they had saved at the time of their departure they calculated would be enough to last them all three for about a fortnight. They had also one whole dressed orignal-skin, and some pieces, to supply them with shoes or mocassins, together with two or three spare pair of mocassins, and fur leather mittens, which they did not anticipate were to become part of their stock of eatables.

The Governor HB. chief, Williams, being gone as before said; and almost all the men being away to their respective departments; and the Co Company's schooner having sailed to winter at Churchill; they were much less narrowly watched than before and their sentinels were discontinued. Indeed the approach of winter, the severity of which in those parts can not be described to, or understood conceived by, the inhabitants of more genial climates, rendered lulled all suspicion of their intention to escape; as every one but those who

"groaned under oppression's iron fangs"

would have considered such an attempt as one of insanity or of desperation, and Iin fact it partook of both.

They procured an old net which was carefully secured being always wrapped round one of their bodies, and which

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