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 population 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-
