House at the source of the Athabasca, sometimes camping on snow twenty feet deep, so that the fires we made in the evening were fifteen or twenty feet below us in the morning."

They had now crossed the mountains, and taking to canoes again paddled down-stream to the portage between Athabasca River and the Saskatchewan. Tramping sixty miles, they reached Fort Augustus (Edmonton) on the Saskatchewan, where canoes were made on the spot, and the voyageurs launched down-stream a trifling distance of two thousand miles by the windings of the river, past Lake Winnipeg southward to Fort William, the Nor' Westers' headquarters on Lake Superior.

Here the capture of Astoria was reported, and bales to the value of a million dollars in modern money sent east in fifty canoes with an armed guard of three hundred men.[22] Coasting along the north shore of Lake Superior, the voyageurs came to the Sault and found Mr. Johnston's establishment a scene of smoking ruins. It was necessary to use the greatest caution not to attract the notice of warring parties on the Lakes.