as high as the Factory.

The principal buildings are placed in the form of a square having an
octagonal court in the centre; they are two storeys in height and have
flat roofs covered with lead. The officers dwell in one portion of this
square, and in the other parts the articles of merchandise are kept: the
workshops, storehouses for the furs, and the servants' houses are ranged
on the outside of the square, and the whole is surrounded by a stockade
twenty feet high. A platform is laid from the house to the pier on the
bank for the convenience of transporting the stores and furs, which is
the only promenade the residents have on this marshy spot during the
summer season. The few Indians who now frequent this establishment belong
to the Swampy Crees. There were several of them encamped on the outside
of the stockade. Their tents were rudely constructed by tying twenty or
thirty poles together at the top, and spreading them out at the base so
as to form a cone; these were covered with dressed moose-skins. The fire
is placed in the centre and a hole is left for the escape of the smoke.
The inmates had a squalid look and were suffering under the combined
afflictions of the whooping-cough and measles; but even these miseries
did not keep them from an excessive indulgence in spirits, which they
unhappily can procure from the traders with too much facility; and they
nightly serenaded us with their monotonous drunken songs. Their sickness
at this time was particularly felt by the traders, this being the season
of the year when the exertion of every hunter is required to procure
their winter's stock of geese, which resort in immense flocks to the
extensive flats in this neighbourhood. These birds during the summer
retire far to the north and breed in security; but when the approach of
winter compels them to seek a more southern climate they generally alight
on the marshes of this bay and fatten there for three weeks or a month
before they take their final departure from the country. They also make a
short halt at the same spots in their progress northwards in the spring.
Their arrival is welcomed with joy, and the goose hunt is one of the most
plentiful seasons of the year. The ducks frequent the swamps all the
summer.

The weather was extremely unfavourable for celestial observations during
our stay, and it was only by watching the momentary appearances of the
sun that we were enabled to obtain fresh rates for the chronometer