With Native Americans either unwilling to talk, purposefully deceitful, or too unfamiliar with wagon travel to offer good advice, Mullan still needed to determine which of the remaining passes known to white explorers would be the best for a planned railroad or wagon road. On May 21, Mullan set out with a small party on horseback, following the Clark Fork. Reaching Lake Pend Oreille, the group abandoned their horses and canoed across the lake and down the Pend Oreille River to the St. Ignatius Mission near modern-day Cusick, Washington. A messenger was sent to John Owen, who had relocated to the Spokane Valley, asking him to send horses to the mission. Meanwhile, Mullan and the remainder of his group traveled northwest about to Fort Colville, a Hudson's Bay Company trading post located at Kettle Falls on the Columbia River. After purchasing supplies, the party returned to St. Ignatius. Consulting with Native Americans living at St. Ignatius, Mullan's group then went south to the Spokane Valley, and returned east by following the Coeur d'Alene River into the mountains and crossing Lookout Pass back to the Bitterroot Valley and Cantonment Stevens. Mullan reported to Stevens that flooding on the Pend Oreille route rendered it less feasible than the Lookout Pass route.