The Klotz Overland Hudson's Bay Expedition. 331 



maintains a chapel just across the little bay, where there is a con- 

 siderable half-breed and Indian settlement. 



Mr. Klotz found at Cumberland House a sun-dial left there by 

 Sir John Franklin in 1826. He took observations upon it for the 

 purpose of ascertaining its position, adjusting it, etc. The original 

 post upon which it rested had rotted almost entirely away. 



Pine Island Lake is badly named. There are no pine trees in 

 the vicinity — only spruce. The shores are quite low and rocky, and 

 the soil of the surrounding country is good. Wheat has been grown 

 very successfully. The place is not subject to early frosts, and 

 agricultural pursuits may be carried on with profit, except where 

 the ground is low and subject to floods. 



Not far from the post is a row of loose stones, forming three sides 

 of a square, placed in position by human hands. The origin of the 

 pile is unknown. It is on a scale of about one hundred feet square. 

 The principal woods in the neighbourhood are near the river, being 

 mostly of birch, poplar and spruce — most of the latter being over 

 fourteen inches in diameter, and some of it three feet. 



Cumberland House is an important fur- trading centre. ' There 

 the packets arrive every spring, from the posts in that vast district, 

 with valuable furs from as far north as Lac du Brochet on Reindeer 

 Lake. In the store-rooms may be seen great packages of fox, mink, 

 marten, musk-rat, beaver and other skins, as also goose-quills isin- 

 glass, castoreum, pemmican, etc. The fur press has a lever thirty feet 

 long, 10 x 22 inches, and is drawn down by one-and-a-half inch 

 rope passing through heavy blocks, the power being had by the 

 use of a large capstan twenty-three inches in diameter, with six- 

 feet arms. 



Cumberland House has its full supply of Indian dogs, hungry 

 brutes that often go into the lake and eat fish out of the nets. 

 They will eat old shoes, or pieces of leather, and chew up a lantern 

 to get at the oil, or carry off a frying-pan to get an opportunity to 

 lick it. And yet these dogs, vicious as they are, could not be dis- 

 pensed with. They are very useful as draught animals, and often 

 haul the rough sleds for hundreds of miles in the winter season. 



The Hudson's Bay Company maintain cattle at Cumberland 



