Preparations were soon completed for our summer trip. Grub, survey instruments, rifles, ammunition, a big 24 foot freight canoe and two “sixteen-footers” etc etc. were all taken aboard the schooner.
Our original party had been augmented by a draughtsman whose duty it was to plot the survey as it was done. When all was ready, we pulled out on the 200 mile trip to the East End of Great Slave lake, where there had been an Outpost of the Hudsons Bay Company now only a ruin.
It was our aim to map the shore line of a chain of Lakes, which ran in a crescent shape, away out into the Barren Lands.
From Great Slave Lake, everything had to be taken across to Artillery Lake, a distance of 11 miles, but necessitating the crossing of five small lakes and, of course, a “portage” between each, where
