was the advice of Captain
Franklin, that I should walk the distance of about one hundred and
eighty miles, from York Fort to that Factory, as I might be delayed in
a canoe, by the vast quantities of floating ice in the Bay, so as not
to meet these Indians in time. I followed this advice, and having
engaged one of the Company's servants, with an Indian who was an
excellent hunter, we set off on our expedition, on the morning of the
11th of July, accompanied by two Indians, who had come express from
Churchill, and were returning thither. It was necessary that we should
embark in a boat, to cross the North River; and in rowing round the
Point of Marsh, we perceived a brightness in the northern horizon, like
that reflected from ice, usually called the _blink_, and which led
us to suppose that vast fields of it were floating along the coast in
the direction that we were going. It happened to be low water when we
crossed the mouth of the river, so that the boat could not approach
nearer than about a mile from the shore, which obliged us to walk this
distance through the mud and water, to the place where we made our
encampment for the night, and where the mosquitoes inflicted their
torments upon us. We were dreadfully annoyed by them, from the swampy
country we had to traverse, and I was glad to start with the dawn of
the following morning, from a spot where they literally blackened a
small canvass tent that was pitched, and hovered around us in clouds so
as to render life itself burdensome. The day, however, afforded us very
little relief, while walking, nearly ancle deep in water, through the
marshes; and such was their torture upon the poor animals, that we
frequently saw the deer coming out of the woods, apparently almost
blinded and distracted with their numbers, to rush into the water on
the shore for relief. This gave an opportunity to the hunter to kill
two of them in the course of the afternoon, so that we had plenty of
venison, and a good supply of wild fowl, which he had shot for our
evening repast. We started at sunrise the next morning, after having
had but little sleep, as I had been wrapped in my blanket almost to
suffocation, to escape in a degree the misery of our unceasing torment.
Towards noon, we had much better walking than we had before met with,
and were relieved from the mosquitoes by a change of wind blowing cold
from off the ice, which was now seen from the horizon to the shores of
the bay. The relief