Henry Kelsey, the apprentice boy, fresh from the streets of London, promptly ran amuck of the strict rules at Nelson. He went in and out of the fort without leave, and when gates were locked, he climbed the walls. In spite of rules to the contrary, he talked with the Indians and hunted with them, and when Captain Geyer switched him soundly for disobedience, he broke bars, jumped the walls, and ran away with a party of Assiniboines. About this time, came the French to the bay. The Company was moving heaven and earth to induce servants to go inland for trade when an Indian runner brought a message on birch bark from Kelsey. He had been up Hayes River with the Indians and now offered to conduct an exploration on condition of pardon. Geyer not only pardoned the young renegade but welcomed him back to the fort bag and baggage, Indian wife and all the trumpery of an Indian family. The great Company issued Kelsey a formal commission for discovery, and the next year on July 15, 1691, as the Assiniboines departed from Deering’s Point where they camped to trade at Nelson, Kelsey launched out in a canoe with them. Radisson and young Chouart had been up this river some distance; but as far as known, Kelsey was the first white man to follow Hayes River westward as far as the prairies. The weather was exceedingly dry, game scarce, grass high and brittle, the tracks hard to follow whether of man or beast. Within a week, the Indians had gone up one hundred and seventy miles toward what are now known as Manitoba and Saskatchewan, but only two moose and one partridge had been killed, and provisions were exhausted. Leaving the Indians, Kelsey pushed forward across country following the trail of an encampment to the fore. At the end of a thirty mile tramp through brushwood of poplars and scrub birch, he came to three leather tepees. No one was in them. Men and women were afield hunting. Ravenous with hunger, Kelsey ransacked provision bags. He found nothing but dried grass and was fain to stay his hunger with berries. At night the hunters came in with ten swans and a moose. Here, Kelsey remained with them hunting till his party came up, when all advanced together another one hundred and thirty miles to the Assiniboine camping place. There were only twenty-six tents of Assiniboines. In a fray, the main party of Assiniboine hunters had slain three Cree women, and had now fled south, away from Cree territory. By the middle of August, Kelsey and his hunters were on the buffalo plains. All day, the men hunted. At night, the women went out to bring in and dress the meat. Once, exhausted, Kelsey fell sound asleep on the trail. When he awakened, there was not even the dust of the hunt to guide him back to camp. From horizon to horizon was not a living soul; only the billowing prairie, grass neck high, with the lonely call of birds circling overhead. By following the crumpled grass and watching the sky for the reflection of the camp fires at night,