When the summer fairly set in, the arctic expedition under Sir John Richardson commenced its return. The van, with corporal Mackie, started about a week before Sir John, who followed on the 7th May with Mitchell, Brodie, and three seamen. In five and a half days the journey over the ice was completed, and on the 12th they encamped at Cape Macdonald, clearing away for the purpose snow to the depth of five feet. They then moved on to Fort Franklin, where the advance division had arrived with a good supply of provisions for the voyage. Soon afterwards a detached party was commissioned to Fort Norman for a barge and stores, for which Sir John Richardson waited nearly a month, having with him Mitchell and Brodie and two fishermen, who, in the mean time, lived on trout, whitefish, herrings, and geese, and “bivouacked under the shelter of a boat’s sail as a substitute for a tent.” In time they quitted the vicinity of the fishing-hut, and moved to the banks of the Bear Lake river, where they encamped until the 9th June, when the descent of the river commenced. In the fishing coble brought from Fort Norman, Sir John Richardson with three of the party embarked, whilst Mitchell, Brodie, and a fisherman named Morrison, walked along the bank of the river, each of them carrying his own bedding and clothing. Narcisse, another fisherman, was left behind in charge of some stores. Half an hour after setting out, the party in the coble put ashore, “and in a short time Corporal Mitchell and Morrison joined them, but private Brodie, having struck into the woods with the view of making a straighter course, did not arrive in the hour that the chief waited for him;” and expecting that he had gone past, the voyage was resumed with Mitchell and Morrison added to the party in the boat.[39] Fourteen miles from the lake a _cache_ was reached; and as Brodie had not arrived in the course of the day, it was evident he had lost himself, and therefore corporal Mitchell and Morrison were sent “back to the lake to acquaint Narcisse with what had happened, and to engage an Indian living at the fishery to go in quest of Brodie. In the meantime the party at intervals fired their fowling-pieces, and set fire to some trees, that the smoke might be seen by the strayed wayfarer at a distance.”[40]