Next morning we were early in motion and were glad to observe that we had outwitted the Indians and outstripped their signal-fires. After this we travelled more at leisure, hunting as we advanced, and in due time reached Frances lake. For a few years after this we confined our operations to trading between Frances lake and Pelly banks; but during the summer we sent hunting parties down to Pelly to collect provisions for our establishments; and by this means we obtained accurate information respecting the Pelly river, its resources and Indian tribes. In the winter of 1847-8 we built boats at Pelly banks and, sending off our returns to Fort Simpson, we started off early in June, 1848, to establish a post at the forks of Pelly and Lewis rivers, which I named Fort Selkirk. Ever since our discovery of the Pelly in 1840 various conjectures were hazarded as to what river it really was and where it entered the sea. Fort Yukon was, I think, established in 1847, from Peel river near the mouth of the Mackenzie. From the first I expressed my belief, in which hardly anyone concurred, that the Pelly and the Yukon were identical. In 1850, having obtained Sir George Simpson's permission, I explored the lower river, descending a distance of about 1200 miles and by reaching Fort Yukon proved the correctness of my opinion. From Fort Yukon I directed my boat and party upwards into the Porcupine river. I was accompanied by Mr. Murray, who was conveying the returns and whose duty it was to take back with him the Yukon outfit from La Pierre's house at the head of the Porcupine river, to which point supplies were transported over the mountains in winter by dogsleighs from Peel river. La Pierre's house duly reached, we left our boat there and walked over the mountains to Peel river, about ninety miles; thence by boat we ascended the Mackenzie river to Fort Simpson. I thus performed a circuit of several thousand miles from my point of departure on the Liard river. Great astonishment was felt by all my friends and acquaintances when they saw me reach Fort Simpson by coming up the Mackenzie river instead of descending the Liard, for no one entertained a suspicion that the Pelly river had any connection with the Yukon or that the Pelly was linked with the Porcupine, Peel and Mackenzie rivers. Thenceforward this new route, so unexpectedly found out, was made the highway for the transport of outfits to, and results of trade from the Pelly and all intermediate posts. When I visited England in 1853 this vast stretch of country--until then a blank on the map and untrodden and unknown of white men--was under my direction correctly delineated on his map of North America by J. Arrowsmith, Hudson's Bay Company's topographer; and hence it happens that many of these rivers and places of note are named after my friends or after the rivers in my native glens.