yard, laid my hand upon the _truck_. After a time I became
accustomed to it, and thought nothing of taking an airing on the
royal-yard after breakfast.

About the 5th or 6th of August, the captain said we must be near the
land. The deep-sea lead was rigged, and a sharp lookout kept, but no
land appeared. At last, one fine day, while at the mast-head, I saw
something like land on the horizon, and told them so on deck. They saw
it too, but gave me no answer. Soon a hurried order to "Dowse
top-gallant-sails and reef top-sails" made me slide down rather hastily
from my elevated position. I had scarcely gained the deck, when a
squall, the severest we had yet encountered, struck the ship, laying her
almost on her beam-ends; and the sea, which had been nearly calm a few
minutes before, foamed and hissed like a seething caldron, and became
white as snow. This, I believe, was what sailors call a _white squall_.
It was as short as it was severe, and great was our relief when the
ship regained her natural position in the water. Next day we saw land
in earnest, and in the afternoon anchored in "Five Fathom Hole," after
passing in safety a sandbar, which renders the entrance into this
roadstead rather difficult.

Here, then, for the first time I beheld the shores of Hudson Bay; and
truly their appearance was anything but prepossessing. Though only at
the distance of two miles, so low and flat was the land, that it
appeared ten miles off, and scarcely a tree was to be seen. We could
just see the tops of one or two houses in York Factory, the principal
depot of the country, which was seven miles up the river at the mouth of
which we lay. In a short time the sails of a small schooner came in
sight, and in half an hour more the _Frances_ (named after the amiable
lady of the governor, Sir George Simpson) was riding alongside.

The skipper came on board, and immediately there commenced between him
and the captain a sharp fire of questions and answers, which roused me
from a slumber in which I had been indulging, and hurried me on deck.
Here the face of things had changed. The hatches were off, and bales of
goods were scattered about in all directions. Another small schooner
had arrived, and the process of discharging the vessel was going rapidly
forward. A boat was then dispatched to the factory with the packet-box
and letter-bag, and soon after the _Frances_ stood in for the shore.

The _Prince Albert_ had arrived almost