Thompson, nevertheless, was not to be deterred from his enterprise. He proceeded at once to Fairford House, the trading post kept by Malcolm Ross on the Churchill near the mouth of the Reindeer river, where he hoped to get some assistance. To his great disappointment, he found that not a man could be spared from the trade in furs. There were, however, a few Chepawyan Indians lingering about the fort and from among these he managed to engage two young men. Kozdaw and "Paddy" had hunted for two winters in the country he was about to explore, although neither of them had ever been on the rivers and lakes in summer. Their only practice in canoes had been to lie offshore in the lakes on a calm day, watching for the deer to take refuge from the flies, and this gave them no experience of the currents and rapids of rivers; yet, such as they were, Thompson had no choice but to take them. The first task was to construct a canoe. Having searched the forest for a supply of birch bark, they made a boat seventeen feet in length. Into this they packed their meagre outfit, a fowling piece with forty balls, five pounds of shot, three flints and five pounds of powder, a fishing net, a hatchet and a small tent of grey cotton. These articles, together with a few handfuls of beads, rings, and awls for trading, made up their terribly inadequate equipment. In the grey dawn of a June morning, 1796, Thompson launched his canoe on the turbid waters of the Missinippi. The party advanced rapidly, making a survey as they went. For supplies they relied on their solitary net and gun. Turning into the Reindeer river, they worked their way north against a moderate current to Reindeer lake. A hundred miles up the west coast of this lake brought them to a point clothed with tolerably good pines. This point Thompson noted as a suitable site for building a trading post on his return. The whole distance through which they had come had a barren, rocky appearance, relieved only by patches of stunted birch, aspen, and spruce. Since there was little or no soil, the trees stood with their roots interlaced like the trees on the frozen lands of Hudson Bay; and, like them, they were kept moist in summer by the wet moss with which their roots were covered. Through wide stretches the forest fires had passed, leaving the country unsightly and ghostlike, and destroying the wild animals of the forest. Thompson was now in fact approaching the northern limit of trees, beyond which stretch the barren lands, the home of the musk ox and caribou.