Page:Across the sub-Arctics of Canada (1897).djvu/17

 were all essential qualities. These were obtained from the Peterboro' Canoe Company, who furnished us with two beautiful varnished cedar canoes, eighteen feet in length, and capable of carrying two thousand pounds each, while weighing only one hundred and twenty pounds. Arrangements had also been made to have a nineteen foot basswood canoe, used during the previous summer, and two men in readiness at Fort McMurray on the Athabasca River.

Four other canoemen were chosen to complete the party, three of them being Iroquois experts from Caughnawaga, Quebec. These three were brothers, named Pierre, Louis and Michel French. Pierre was a veteran canoeman, being as much at home in a boiling rapid as on the calmest water. For some years he had acted as ferryman at Caughnawaga, and only recently had made a reputation for himself by running the Lachine Rapids on Christmas day, out of sheer bravado. His brother Louis had won some distinction also through having accompanied Lord Wolseley as a voyageur on his Egyptian campaigns; while Michel, the youngest and smallest of the three, was known to be a good steady fellow, boasting of the same distinction as his brother Louis.

The other man, a half-breed named John Flett, was engaged at Prince Albert, in the North-West. He was highly recommended, not so much as a canoeman, but as being an expert portager of great experience in northern travel, and also an Eskimo linguist.

The two men, James Corrigal and François Maurice, who through the kindness of Mr. Moberly, the officer of the Hudson's Bay Company at Isle-à-la-Crosse, were