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 
