and several surgical instruments, over
which a huge mortar and pestle presided, completed the catalogue.

The different sleeping apartments around were not only interesting to
contemplate, but also extremely characteristic of the pursuits of their
different tenants. The first I entered was very small--just large
enough to contain a bed, a table, and a chest, leaving little room for
the occupant to move about in; and yet, from the appearance of things,
he did move about in it to some purpose, as the table was strewn with a
number of saws, files, bits of ivory and wood, and in a corner a small
vice held the head of a cane in its iron jaws. These were mixed with a
number of Indian account-books and an inkstand, so that I concluded I
had stumbled on the bedroom of my friend Mr Wilson, the postmaster.

The quadrant-case and sea-chest in the next room proved it to be the
skipper's, without the additional testimony of the oiled-cloth coat and
sou'-wester hanging from a peg in the wall.

The doctor's room was filled with dreadful-looking instruments,
suggestive of operations, amputations, bleeding wounds, and human agony;
while the accountant's was equally characterised by methodical neatness,
and the junior clerks' by utter and chaotic confusion. None of these
bedrooms were carpeted; none of them boasted of a chair--the trunks and
boxes of the persons to whom they belonged answering instead; and none
of the beds were graced with curtains. Notwithstanding this emptiness,
however, they had a somewhat furnished appearance, from the number of
greatcoats, leather capotes, fur caps, worsted sashes, guns, rifles,
shot-belts, snow-shoes, and powder-horns with which the walls were
profusely decorated. The ceilings of the rooms, moreover, were very
low--so much that by standing on tiptoe I could touch them with my hand;
and the window in each was only about three feet high by two and a half
broad, so that, upon the whole, the house was rather snug than
otherwise.

Such was the habitation in which I dwelt; such were the companions with
whom I associated at York Factory.

As the season advanced the days became shorter, the nights more frosty,
and soon a few flakes of snow fell, indicating the approach of winter.
About the beginning of October the cold, damp, snowy weather that
usually precedes winter set in; and shortly afterwards Hayes River was
full of drifting ice, and the whole country covered with snow. A week
or so after