948 
FOREST AND 
STREAM 
AN EARTHLY PARADISE FAR NORTH OF “53” 
The Inspector’s House, a Comfortable Frame Dwelling—Think of Wild Strawberries, Floating in Bowls of Rich Jersey Cream, Away Out Here in 
the Middle of Hudson’s Bay. 
THE HUDSON BAY POSTS PRESENT A COMBINATION OF FLIES, DOGS AND OTHER DISAGREE- 
ABLE FEATURES, BUT THE STRUTTON ISLANDS OUT IN THE BAY ARE A REFUGE AND DELIGHT 
By R. J. Fraser. 
T HE sportsman, follower of the out-of-doors, 
or tourist who makes the long canoe 
jaunt to the James Bay country and 
leaves there without having made a visit to The 
Struttons, has committed an oversight that is 
an injustice to himself, to his fireside friends 
at home, but most of all to the Bay country 
itself. 
“The only place worth living in,” one puts it, 
“an oasis in a desert of flies,” says another. 
Madame Draulette, wife of the first inspector 
of the Revillon Freres, traders in James Bay, 
who, with her husband, spent nearly ten years 
at the northern posts, called the Strutton Islands, 
a “paradise.” And that describes it perfectly, 
using the term relatively. 
At Moose Factory, or Moose River Post, the 
rival fur trading establishments at the mouth of 
the Moose River, which constitute the end of 
your canoe journey if you travel by that route, 
you spend your wakeful moments fighting mos¬ 
quitoes and black flies. At mid-day in the sum¬ 
mer months—the tourist season there, as else¬ 
where—the heat grows at times oppressive, while 
day and night the Indian dogs torture your ears 
with their constant fiendish howling. 
Or, if perchance you take a more eastern route 
to tidewater, by the Lake St. John or the Notta- 
way, your terminal point is Rupert’s House. It 
is Moose on a smaller scale, though the flies are 
there in equal numbers and their deadly work 
is augmented by another insect, a cross between 
a huge house fly and a wasp, locally known as a 
“bulldog.” This beast will actually bite a piece 
from your forehead, fly to a nearby perch, and 
there devour it before your very eyes. Their 
ferocity is truly appalling. And always, of 
boasts of a sheltered roadstead. Here the Hud¬ 
son’s Bay Company have their port of call for 
the yearly steamer from “the outside” and this 
is their main storage depot and point of distri¬ 
bution for the Bay. But the island is all sand 
and muskeg, and either makes most miserable 
tenting grounds. Half the known species of 
pestilent insects breed here and the sheltered 
roadstead is shallow and difficult of approach. 
The old Scotch hospitality of the H. B. C.’s 
factor is the only bearable feature of the travel¬ 
er’s sojourn there. 
You visit these points and each in its way 
offers its peculiar interesting attractions. But 
the moving from one to the next does not banish 
the discomforts of the last one, except it be by 
an application of a worse one. It is a clear case 
of “out of the frying pan into the fire.” This 
particular grouch of mine is an impartial one, 
based on experiences, not of days or weeks, Put 
of months spent at each of these places. 
What of The Struttons, then, you ask? Not 
so many miles east of Charlton Island lie 
a group of three bouldery, spruce-clad islands 
surrounding a clear, deep water anchorage in 
which a superdreadnaught can swing at anchor 
and ride out the fiercest gale. Steamers that 
are now on the Russian ice route to Archangel 
have done so. These are the general features of 
the Strutton Islands. Fifteen years ago, when 
the Revillon Traders entered the Bay to con¬ 
test the Hudson’s Bay Company’s monopoly of 
the fur trade of that region, they chose this 
spot for their port and distributing point. It 
was the only choice left open to them, being the 
one centrally-located point to and from which 
their steamer could come and go. 
course, at Rupert you have the serenade of the 
dogs. 
Coast northward, in canoe, or by “Company’s” 
coast boat with its timid, lagging Indian crew— 
you will choose canoe every time for speed, and 
sailboat if comfort is more desirable—to the 
companion posts on the shores of the Bay and 
you find the same prevalent conditions; the mos¬ 
quitoes, a large, gray, anaemic-looking specie, 
seem to increase their numbers and blood-thirsti¬ 
ness with the latitude. At Fort George, 150 miles 
north of Rupert’s House, they are given the 
worst name on the coast. 
Out in the Bay, forty-eight miles northeasterly 
from the mouth of the Moose River, lies Charl¬ 
ton Island, the largest insular land in these wat¬ 
ers. It is thirty miles around its shores and 
' ~ .".. .. ~~. • . 1 
The Company Boats, With the Supplies for 
a Year. 
