OF THE POLAR SEA. 



25 



surrounded by a stockade twenty feet high. A platform is laid from 

 the house to the pier on the bank for the convenience of transporting 

 the stones and furs, which is the only promenade the residents have 

 on this marshy spot during the summer season. The few Indians, 

 who now frequent this establishment, belong to the Sicampi/ Crees. 

 There were several of them encamped on the outside of the stockade. 

 Their tents were rudely constructed by tying twenty or thirty poles 

 together at the top, and spreading them out at the base so as to form 

 a cone ; these were covered with dressed moose-skins. The fire is 

 placed in the centre, and a hole is left for the escape of the smoke. 

 The inmates had a squalid look, and were suffering under the com- 

 bined afflictions of hooping-cough and measles ; but even these mi- 

 series did not keep them from an excessive indulgence in the use of 

 spirits, which they unhappily can procure from the traders with too 

 much facility ; and they nightly serenaded us with their monotonous 

 drunken songs. Their sickness, at this time, was particularly felt by 

 the traders, this being the season of the year when the exertion of 

 every hunter is required to procure their winter's stock of geese, 

 which resort in immense flocks to the extensive flats in this neigh- 

 bourhood. These birds, during the summer, retire far to the north, 

 and breed in security ; but, when the approach of winter compels 

 them to seek a more southern climate, they generally alight on the 

 marshes of this bay, and fatten there for three weeks or a month, 

 before they take their final departure from the country. They also 

 make a short halt at the same spots in their progress northwards in 

 the spring. Their arrival is welcomed with joy, and the period of 

 the goose hunt is one of the most plentiful seasons of the year. The 

 ducks frequent the swamps all the summer. 



The weather was extremely unfavourable for celestial observations 

 during our stay, and it was only by watching the momentary appear- 

 ances of the sun, that we were enabled to obtain fresh rates for the 

 chronometers, and allow for their errors from Greenwich time. The 



E 



