Adventure and adventurers > Hudson Bay, or, Everyday life in the wilds of North America

188
YORK FACTORY
amount of two years’ outfit for the whole northern
department, are stored. On each side of this is a long,
low whitewashed house, with green edgings, in one
of which visitors and temporary residents during the
summer are quartered. The other is the summer mess-
room. Four roomy fur-stores stand at right angles to
these houses, thus forming three sides of the front
square. Behind these stands a row of smaller build¬
ings for the labourers and tradesmen; and on the right
hand is the dwelling-house of the gentleman in charge,
and adjoining it the clerk’s house; while on the left are
the provision-store and Indian trading-shop. A few
insignificant buildings, such as the oil-store and lumber-
house, intrude themselves here and there; and on the
right a tall ungainly outlook rises in the air, affording
the inhabitants an extensive view of their wild domains;
and just beside it stands the ice-house. This latter
building is filled every spring with blocks of solid ice
of about three feet square, which do not melt during
the short but intensely hot summer. The inhabitants
are thus enabled to lay up a store of fresh meat for
summer use, which lasts them till about the com¬
mencement of winter. The lower stratum of ice in
this house never melts; nor, indeed, does the soil of
the surrounding country, which only thaws to the
depth of a few feet, the subsoil being perpetually
frozen.
The climate of York Factory is very bad in the warm
months of the year, but during the winter the intensity
of the cold renders it healthy. Summer is very short;
and the whole three seasons of spring, summer, and