on “low, miry ground without a ditch.”  The stagnant water by which the post was surrounded would be productive of much ill-health, were there a longer summer.  The buildings of the Factory were also badly planned, and badly constructed, so that the Fort was unsuitable for quartering the Colonists.  Besides this, Messrs. Cook and Auld, the former Governor of York Factory, and the latter chief officer of Fort Churchill, having the old Hudson’s Bay Company’s spirit of dislike of Colonists, decided that the new settlers, being an innovation and an evil, should have separate quarters built for them at a distance from the Fort.

Poor Colonists!  Miles Macdonell is wearied with them in their complaining spirit, berates them for indolence, and finds fault with their awkwardness as workmen.  To Macdonell, who was a Canadian, accustomed as a soldier and frontiersman to dealing with canoes, boats, and every means of land transport, the sturdy, steady going Orkneyman was slow and clumsy.

The inexperienced new settler thus gets rather brusque treatment from the Colonial, more a good deal than he deserves.

Accordingly it was decided to erect log dwellings for the workmen and the settlers on the higher ground north of the Nelson River.  Several miles distant from the Factory itself, Spruce trees of considerable size grew along the river, and so all hands were put to work to have huts or shanties erected to protect the Colonists from the severe cold of winter, which would soon be upon them, although on October 5th Miles Macdonell wrote home to Lord Selkirk:  “The weather has been mild and pleasant for some days past.”

The erection of suitable houses, that is homely on the exterior, but warm in the coldest weather, was superintended by Miles Macdonell—­himself a Colonial and one aware of the precautions needing to be taken.

Amid all the troubles and complaints of the winter there were none against the suitableness of the log dwellings which were erected on the chosen site to which was given the name, “Nelson Encampment.”  Winter, however, came in fiercely enough in November, although again on the 29th of November, Macdonell writes to Cook, Governor of the Factory:  “A mild day enables us to send a boat across the Nelson with the Express.”  It was open water on the river.

Macdonell knew well that with the recent arrivals from the Old Land, one of the greatest dangers would be the weakening and dangerous disease of scurvy.  He had sought for supplies of “Essence of Malt” and “Crystallized Salts of Lemon,” and at the beginning of December as the people were living chiefly on salt provisions and a short allowance of oatmeal the scurvy made its appearance.  Medical care was given by Mr. Edwards and the disease was at once met.  However within a month one-third of the Immigrants were thus afflicted and the fear was that the malady would go through the whole Encampment.  But the remedy that Champlain found so effective at