With a heavy heart he turned his back on the far west, and entered the cold and dismal forest which he knew only to loathe. But loyalty was one of the deepest instincts of his nature, and so, with indefatigable energy, he proceeded to build new posts and explore new routes in the region north-east of Lake Winnipeg. In the course of his efforts, he carried the flag of the North-Westers to a point on South Indian lake not more than two hundred and fifty miles distant from Churchill itself. In his relations with rival traders, he exhibited a friendliness and courtesy that stands in marked contrast with the cut-throat methods too frequently adopted at critical moments of competition. The surveys begun years before, when he was working under Joseph Colen, were now triumphantly finished. Of them, a member of the Canadian Geological Survey says, "After Thompson had completed his surveys of this muskrat country, no further information was obtained about it for nearly a century, and when in 1896, I travelled through it, the only map of any service which was available was that drawn by David Thompson in 1813 from surveys made at this time." It is sometimes imagined that the Indians a century ago existed in vast numbers; and that they were universally of a warlike and bloodthirsty disposition. This is a complete mistake. It was only in especially favourable localities that conditions were such as to promote the evolution of large bands, and generally speaking the Indian was a poor and humble creature. Lacking the power of invention, he was often satisfied to make use of utensils of the most primitive character, and he was almost, if not quite, unarmed. Throughout the whole of the Muskrat country Thompson was able to count but ninety-two widely scattered families, each of them numbering perhaps seven souls. This gave to every human being from two to three hundred square miles of hunting country. Yet so poor was the region and so great the improvidence of its inhabitants that, in unfavourable seasons, the population was often reduced to the verge of starvation, and it was only by means of the greatest efforts that they wrested a livelihood from their gloomy land of rock and forest. All of Thompson's efforts therefore did not avail to bring satisfactory returns from a region so poor in furs, and inhabited by such a sparse and wretched population. It was with joy in his heart that he handed over the district to a partner in the early summer of 1806, and once more wended his way back to Fort William.