Unfortunately, on reaching the Egg River, where Matonabi's people had made a cache or hiding place in which they had stored a quantity of provisions and implements, they found that other Indians had discovered this hiding place and robbed it of nearly every article.

However, at the end of December they reached Island Lake, where they entered a camp of Matonabi's people, and here they found a little food in the way of fish and dried venison.

This was a great disappointment to Matonabi's people; but Hearne remarks the fortitude with which they bore this, nor did one of them ever speak of revenge. But the expedition's scarcity of food obliged them to push on from morning till night, day after day; yet the road being very bad, and their sledges heavy, they were seldom able to do more than eighteen miles a day.