landing that evening, Mr. Stuart and I amused ourselves with angling, but took only five or six small fish.
On the 2d, we passed the confluence of Little Slave Lake river. At eight o'clock in the morning, we met a band or family of Indians, of the Knisteneaux tribe.[178] They had just killed a buffalo, which we bought of them for a small brass-kettle. We could not have had a more seasonable rencontre, for our provisions were all consumed.
On the 3d, we reached Little Red Elk river, which we began to ascend, quitting the Athabasca, or Great Red Elk.[179] This stream was very narrow in its channel, and obstructed with boulders: we were obliged to take to the shore, while some of the men dragged along the canoes. Their method was to lash poles across, and wading themselves, lift the canoes over the rocks—a laborious and infinitely tedious operation. {310} The march along the banks was not less disagreeable: for we had to traverse points of forest where the fire had passed, and which were filled with fallen trees.
Wallace and I having stopped to quench our thirst at a rill, the rest got in advance of us; and we lost our way in a labyrinth of buffalo tracks which we mistook for the trail, so that we wandered about for three hours before we came up with the party, who began to fear for our safety, and were firing signal-guns to direct us. As the river now grew deeper, we all embarked in the canoes, and about evening overtook our hunters, who had killed a moose and her two calves.
- [Footnote: the same name, some twenty miles farther up on the Saskatchewan. It became
the principal post of the region, and under the name of Edmonton is still a Hudson's Bay station, and the terminus of the Edmonton branch of the Canadian Pacific Railway.—Ed.]
