Volume 1

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176 FORT DAUPHIN.
la Prairie ;
he complains of having passed a very disagreeable
winter. I sent two men in a small canoe for Portage la
Prairie, with two kegs of high wine and one bale of goods.
20th. Indians arrived in skin canoes from the Salt river
they are alarmed, having, as they said, seen the enemy
;
but this they say every day, being anxious to drift down
river. 22d. Pigeons flying N. in great numbers. Desmarais
caught one sturgeon, three large catfish, and a number
of smaller fishes. 2Sth. Drowned buffalo drift down river
day and night. 26th. I sent Desmarais with a man in a skin
canoe to Langlois ; the latter is to proceed to Portage la
Prairie with dispatches for Mr. Chaboillez. Smoke is rising
in every direction ; this is caused by the Indians returning
from their beaver hunts. We shot three large bears swimming
down river opposite the fort. 2gth. Desmarais
having brought me a horse from Portage la Prairie I went
hunting and chased buffalo ;
but the ground being slippery
my horse fell, and I cut my head on the cock of my gun.
I killed four calves, of which I took only the thighs, and
brought two calves home alive ; they no sooner lost sight
same position. A. Begg's Hist. N. W., I. p. 84, and D. Mills, Rep. Ont. Gov.,
are to the identical effect. Almost every indication points clearly to the N. W.
angle of Lake Manitoba, and I see no reason to bring either present Lake
Dauphin or present Lake St. Martin into the case. But settlement of Verendrye's
original position does not dispose of the question, Where was the N. W.
Co. Fort Dauphin—the post operative in Henry's time ? Peter Pond's N. W.
Co. map, pub. in Canadian Arch. Rep., 1890, p. 53, marks "Fort Dauphin,
1775, P. P." on present Lake Dauphin. Again, Devine's Crown Lands map of
1857 letters " Dauphin L. and Ho." on the S. side of present Lake Dauphin, a
little S.E. from the position assigned to Fort Dauphin by Pond. .
One Fort Dauphin is on record as the scene of a smallpox epidemic in 1780.
In navigating Lake St. Martin, Sept., 1797, Thompson speaks of an "old
house of Cameron and Latour " there ; he goes on to say that Michel AUerie
was being fitted out by Cuthbert Grant for the N. W. Co.'s Fort Dauphin,
but does not specify its position. That is just the trouble—this Fort Dauphin,
of Thompson's and Henry's time—during the whole life of the N. W. Co., in fact
—was so well known that nobody I have read takes the pains to say where it
was. But Thompson's large unpub. map marks " N.W. Co." on the S. side of
present Lake Dauphin, on a river running N. into this lake ;
and if this mark
means Fort Dauphin, it settles the case.