260 LIFE AT VANCOUVER. 



side. The noble river before it, is 1670 yards wide, and from 

 five to seven fathoms in depth. The whole surrounding coun- 

 try is covered with forests of pine, cedar, fir, &c., interspersed 

 here and there with small open spots, all overlooked by the 

 vast snowy pyramids of the President's Range, 35 miles in 

 the east. 



" The fort itself, is an oblong square, 250 yards in length, 

 by 150 in breadth, inclosed by pickets, twenty feet in height. 

 The area within is divided into two courts, around which are 

 arranged thirty-five wooden buildings, used as officers' dwell- 

 ings, lodging apartments for clerks, store-houses for furs, 

 goods and grains, and as workshops for carpenters, black- 

 smiths, coopers, turners, wheelwrights, &c. The building near 

 the rear gate, is occupied as a school-house ; and a brick 

 structure as a powder magazine. 



" Six hundred yards below the fort, and on the bank of the 

 river, is a village of fifty-three log houses ; in these live the 

 Company's servants ; among them is a Hospital, in which those 

 of them who become diseased, are humanely treated. Back 

 and a little east of the fort, is a barn, containing a mammoth 

 threshing-machine, and near this are a number of long sheds, 

 used for storing grain in the sheaf. And behold the Vancou- 

 rer farm, stretching up and down the river, three thousand 

 acres, fenced into beautiful fields, sprinkled with dairy-houses 

 and herdsmen's and shepherd's cottages ! A busy place is 

 this. The farmer on horseback at break of day, summons 

 one hundred half-breeds and Iriquois Indians from their cabins 

 to the fields ; twenty or thirty ploughs tear open the gene- 

 rous soil ; the sowers follow with their seed, and pressing on 

 them, come a dozen harrows to cover it. And thus thirty or 

 forty acres are planted in a day, till the immense farm is 

 under crop. The season passes on, teeming with daily in- 



