command a very extensive view of the country in every direction.

We now determined to proceed towards the Red Indians' Lake, sanguine
that, at that known rendezvous, we would find the objects of our
search.

Travelling over such a country, except when winter has fairly set in,
is truly laborious.

In about ten days we got a glimpse of this beautifully majestic and
splendid sheet of water. The ravages of fire, which we saw in the
woods for the last two days, indicated that man had been near. We
looked down on the lake, from the hills at the northern extremity,
with feelings of anxiety and admiration:--No canoe could be discovered
moving on its placid surface in the distance. We were the first
Europeans who had seen it in an unfrozen state, for the three former
parties who had visited it before, were here in the winter, when its
waters were frozen and covered over with snow. They had reached it
from below, by way of the River Exploits, on the ice. We approached
the lake with hope and caution; but found to our mortification that
the Red Indians had deserted it for some years past. My party had been
so excited, so sanguine, and so determined to obtain an interview of
some kind with these people, that, on discovering, from appearances
every where around us, that the Red Indians--the terror of the
Europeans as well as the other Indian inhabitants of Newfoundland--no
longer existed, the spirits of one and all of us were very deeply
affected. The old mountaineer was particularly overcome. There were
every where indications that this had long been the central and
undisturbed rendezvous of the tribe, where they had enjoyed peace and
security. But these primitive people had abandoned it, after having