THROUGH THE FOREST AND HOME AGAIN. 241 



mail should have come down the Hays River from 

 Oxford House, 250 miles distant, before the close of 

 navigation, but as nothing had yet been heard of it 

 or the party, fears were entertained as to their safety. 

 It was thought they must have been lost in the river. 



As to York Factory, it is one of those places of which 

 it may be said " the light of other days has faded." In 

 the earlier days of the Hudson's Bay Company it was 

 an important centre of trade, the port at which all 

 goods for the interior posts were received, and from 

 which the enormous harvests of valuable furs were 

 annually shipped. Such business naturally necessitated 

 the building of large store-houses and many dwellings 

 to shelter the goods and provide accommodation for the 

 large staff of necessary servants. As late as the summer 

 of 1886, when I visited York, there was a white popula- 

 tion of about thirty, besides a number of Indians and 

 half-breeds in the employ of the Company ; but things 

 had now changed. Less expensive ways of transporting 

 goods into the interior than freighting them hundreds 

 of miles up the rivers in York boats now existed, and 

 as the local supply of furs had become scarce serious 

 results necessarily followed. Gradually the staff of 

 servants had been dismissed or removed, and one by one 

 the dwellings vacated, until York was now almost a 

 deserted village. The Indians also had nearly all gone 

 to other parts of the country. 



One of the first duties receiving our attention upon 

 reaching York was the placing of poor crippled Michel 

 in the doctor's hands. His frozen feet, still dreadfully 

 sore, were carefully attended to, and it was thought 

 that in the course of a few weeks they might be suffi- 

 16 



