Note 101 — {247} CHAP. VIII.

Great Slave Lake is 288 miles long from east to west, very irregular in width, and its area is about 10,400 square miles, being the fifth in size among the great lakes of America. However, no reasonably complete survey has yet been made of it. The place where he crossed it from north to south is on the regular Indian route through the Simpson Islands. A fish peculiar to this lake is the inconnu (see p. 254, note 103), which does not ascend the McKenzie River above the rapids at Fort Smith, and is not found in Athabasca Lake, so that if any confirmation were needed of the identity of his lake with Great Slave Lake, Hearne's reference to this fish would in itself be quite convincing. Hearne was the first white man to visit this lake, for it was not till 1785, between thirteen and fourteen years after his visit, that the traders of the North-West Company from Montreal reached and built a trading-post on it, east of the mouth of the Slave River. On Peter Pond's map of 1785, republished by L. J. Burpee, in his "Search for the Western Sea," 1908, page 182, the following interesting note is written across the space N.E. of Great Slave Lake: "Orchipoins Country et Road to Churchill," showing clearly that Pond knew of the trade carried on by the northern Indians with the Hudson's Bay Company at Churchill.