Colen had given the English directors to understand that he planned to send Ross and Thompson to the Athabaska country; and with the arrival of the annual ship in the autumn of '93, they wrote that they expected much good to follow from the projected expedition, and that they wished William Cook, who had accompanied David into the Muskrat country the previous autumn, to join with the others in the invasion of the far north. But Cook was not recalled from his post on Split lake, and Ross and Thompson were sent up the Saskatchewan to Cumberland House. Thence Thompson was despatched, not to Lake Athabaska, as he had expected, but westward along the river to a new post called Buckingham House, from which he rode still further west to the Beaver hills near the future site of Fort Augustus (Edmonton). Returning, he surveyed the Saskatchewan east from Buckingham House to the Forks, and from the Forks he resurveyed the rest of the river. From Cumberland House, he explored a new route through Goose, Reed, and Burntwood lakes to the Nelson, and thus opened up a direct line of communication between the dépôt at Cumberland House and York factory, much superior to the old course by way of Lake Winnipeg and the Hayes river. Thompson's reappearance at York without having been to the Athabaska country made it necessary for Colen to do no little explaining to the impatient London directors. In a long letter to them, he hinted that it was Tomison who was responsible for the fiasco. Tomison, he said, had refused to pass his word for the advance of wages promised by the Council to those who would volunteer to accompany the expedition. Ross, he declared, was utterly disgusted with the repeated disappointments, and would have returned at once to England, had not Thompson prevailed upon him to make one last trial, this time by way of Reindeer lake. Thompson and Ross, he added, were being fitted out with canoes and supplies at York, and would be sent up the Nelson river track. The directors were deceived, and swallowed their disappointment, hoping to hear that the difficulties which stood in the way of the Athabaska expedition had been successfully overcome. But, even now, Thompson was sent, not to the North, but back once more to the Muskrat country, this time to Reed lake. Here, in a district comparatively rich in fish, game, and furs, he built a house, and spent one of the coldest winters in the history of the Hudson Bay. While hunting and trading, he also prepared for the directors of the Company, the maps and surveys of the country which he had already traversed. In July of the following year, 1795, he paddled down the river on what was to be his last visit to York.