jam
in the north off Chesterfield Inlet, the usual suffering from scurvy.
Something was accomplished on the exploration of Fox Channel, but no
North-West Passage was found, a fact that told in favour of the Company
when the parliamentary inquiry of 1749 came on.

In the end, an influence stronger than the puerile frenzy of Arthur
Dobbs forced the Company to unwonted activity in inland exploration. La
Verendrye, the French Canadian, and his sons had come from the St
Lawrence inland and before 1750 had established trading-posts on the Red
river, on the Assiniboine, and on the Saskatchewan. After this fewer
furs came down to the Bay. It was now clear that if the Indians would
not come to the adventurers, the adventurers must go to the Indians. As
a beginning one Anthony Hendry, a boy outlawed from the Isle of Wight
for smuggling, was permitted to go back with the Assiniboines from
Nelson in June 1754.

Hendry's itinerary is not difficult to follow. The Indian place-names
used by him are the Indian place-names used to-day by the Assiniboines.
Four hundred paddlers manned the big brigade of canoes which he
accompanied inland to the modern Oxford Lake and from Oxford to Cross
Lake. The latter name explains itself. Voyageurs could reach the
Saskatchewan by coming on down westward through Playgreen Lake to Lake
Winnipeg, or they could save the long detour round the north end of Lake
Winnipeg--a hundred miles at least, and a dangerous stretch because of
the rocky nature of the coast and the big waves of the shallow lake--by
portaging across to that chain of swamps and nameless lakes, leading
down to the expansion of the Saskatchewan, known under the modern name
of the Pas. It is quite plain from Hendry's narrative that the second
course was followed, for he came to 'the river on which the French have
two forts' without touching Lake Winnipeg; and he gave his distance as
five hundred miles from York,[4] which would bring him by way of Oxford
and Cross Lakes precisely at the Pas.

[4] Nelson. Throughout this narrative Nelson, the name of the port and
river, is generally used instead of York, the name of the fort or
factory.

The Saskatchewan is here best described as an elongated swamp three
hundred miles by seventy, for the current of the river proper loses
itself in countless channels through reed-grown swamps and turquoise
lakes, where the white pelicans stand motionless as rocks and the wild
birds gather together in flock