Black's vivid journal account of the expedition conveys the extreme hardships faced by the crew, and what Black believed was the general privation of the country — both as a source of food and of furs. Two of his men deserted in the course of the expedition, giving Deserters Canyon its name. The river proved to be a rough and difficult traverse, and Black's assessment was that this fact — coupled with what he perceived to be the general absence of marketable furs or a healthy First Nations population — made the territory impracticable for the extension of the fur trade or as a northern route to the Pacific. Nonetheless, Black and his crew had completed an extraordinarily extensive survey of what is now north-central British Columbia. They had not only journeyed to the source of the Mackenzie River, but had traveled over the Arctic-Pacific divide, and to the sources of two major watersheds — the Stikine and Liard.