Having heard, on our passage through Lake Superior, that a gun fired in the basin of Sandy Lake, could be heard at the fort, that experiment was tried, while we sat down or sauntered about to await the result. Having waited in vain, the shots were repeated. After the lapse of a long time, a boat, with two men, was descried in the distance approaching. It proved to be occupied by two young clerks of the trading establishment, named Ashmun and Fairbanks. They managed to embark the elite of our party, in their small vessel, and, as we crossed the lake, amused us with an account of the excitement our shots had caused. Some Indian women affirmed to them that they had heard warwhoops, and to make sure that a Sioux war party were not upon them, they drove off their cattle to a place of safety. In the actual position of affairs, the hunt being over for the year, and the avails being sent to Michilimackinac (for this was the head-quarters of the factor whom we had met at Shelldrake River), the probabilities of its being a hunting party were less. We informed them that we were an advance party of an expedition sent out to explore the sources of the Mississippi River, under the personal order of his Excellency Governor Cass, who was urging his way up the St. Louis to the Savanna Portage, through which he intended to descend into Sandy Lake. It was near sunset before we landed at the establishment. We found the trading fort a stockade of squared pine timber, thirteen feet high, and facing an area a hundred feet square, with bastions pierced for musketry at the southeast and northwest angles. There were three or four acres outside of one of the angles, picketed in, and devoted to the culture of potatoes. The stockade inclosed two ranges of buildings. This is the post visited by Lieut. Z. Pike, U. S. A., on snow-shoes, and with dog-trains, in the winter of 1806, when it was occupied by the British northwest trading company. As a deep mantle of snow covered the country, it did not permit minute observations on the topography or natural history; and there have been no explorations since. Pike's chief error was in placing the source of the Mississippi in Turtle Lake--a mistake which is due entirely, it is believed, to the imperfect or false maps furnished him by the chief traders of the time.