" If so, the
credit for the discovery of the Saskatchewan has been wrongly given
to the Chevalier, as he was called, a son of Varenne, Sieur de la
Varendrye.
Franklin left Cumberland in January, 1820, by dog train for
Chipewyan, via Fort Carlton and Green Lake. Fort Carlton was the
great food supply post, then and long afterwards, of the Hudson's
Bay Company, buffalo and wapiti being very abundant. The North-West
Company's fort, called La Montee, was three miles beyond Carlton,
and harbored seventy French Canadians and sixty women and children,
who consumed seven hundred pounds of meat daily, the ration being
eight pounds. This post was at that time in charge of Mr. Hallett,
a forebear, if I mistake not, of my old friend, William Hallett,
leader of the English Plain Hunt, and a distinguished loyalist in
the rebellion of 1869.
Franklin and Back left Fort Carlton on the 8th February, and
reached Green Lake on the 17th. The North-West Company's post at
the lake was managed by Dugald Cameron, and that of the Hudson's
Bay Company by a Mr. MacFarlane, and, having been equipped at
both posts with carioles, sledges and provisions, they left
"under a fusillade from the half-breed women." From the end of
the lake they followed for a short distance a small river, then
"crossed the woods to Beaver River, and proceeding along it,
passed the mouths of two rivers, the latter of which, they were
told, was a channel by which the Indians go to Lesser Slave
Lake.
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