July 1, Hendry was one hundred and thirteen miles from York. Terrific rains, hot and thundery, deluged the whole flotilla, and Hendry learned for the first time what clouds of huge inland mosquitoes can do. Mosquito Point, he called the camp. Here, the Hayes broke into three or four branches. Hendry’s brigade of Assiniboines began to work up one of the northwestward branches toward the Nelson. The land seemed to be barren rock. At camping places was neither fish nor fowl. The voyageurs took a reef in their belts and pressed on. Three beaver afforded some food on Steel River but “we are greatly fatigued,” records Hendry, “with carrying and hauling our canoes, and we are not well fed; but the natives are continually smoking, which I find allays hunger.” Pikes and ducks replenished the provision bags on Duck Lake beyond Steel River. Twenty canoes of Inland Indians were met at Shad Falls beyond Cree Lake, on their way to York. With these Hendry sent a letter to Governor Isham. It was July 20 before Hendry realized that the labyrinth of willow swamps had led into Nelson River. It must have been high up Nelson River, in some of its western sources east of Playgreen Lake, for one day later, on Sunday the 21st, he records: “We paddled two miles up the Nelson and then came to Keiskatchewan River, on which the French have two houses which we expect to see to-morrow.” He was now exactly five hundred miles from York. “The mosquitoes are intolerable, giving us peace neither day nor night. We paddled fourteen miles up the Keiskatchewan west, when we came to a French house. On our arrival, two Frenchmen came to the waterside and in a very genteel manner invited me into their house, which I readily accepted. One asked if I had any letter from my master and why I was going inland. I answered I had no letter and was out to view the country; that I meant to return this way in spring. He told me his master and men were gone down to Montreal with the furs, and that they must detain me until his return. However, they were very kind, and at night I went to my tent and told Little Bear my leader. He only smiled and said: “They dare not detain you.” Hendry was at the Pas on the Saskatchewan. If he had come up the Saskatchewan from Lake Winnipeg, he would have found that the French had another fort at the mouth of the river—Bourbon.