ome out from England as
volunteers, except for their expenses, to help us through with the new
effort. At the same time there was three hundred dollars to pay for
the necessary survey and line cutting, and supplies of food for the
loggers for the winter. Houses must also be erected and furnished.

Ignorance undoubtedly supplied us with the courage to begin.
Personally I knew nothing whatever of mills, having never even seen
one. Nor had I seen the grant of land, or selected a site for the
building. This was left entirely to the people themselves; and as none
of them had ever seen a mill either, we all felt a bit uneasy about
our capacities. I had left orders with the captain of the Cooperator
(our schooner) to fetch the mill and put it where the people told him;
but when I heard that there was one piece which included the boiler
which weighed three tons, it seemed to me that they could never handle
it. We had no wharf ready to receive it and no boat capable of
carrying it. I woke many times that summer wondering if it had not
gone to the bottom while they were attempting the landing. There was
no communication whatever with them as we were six hundred miles
farther north on our summer cruise; and we had not the slightest
control over the circumstances in which we might become involved.

It was late in the season and the snow was already deep on the ground
when eventually we were piloted to the spot selected. It was nine
miles up the bay on a well-wooded promontory of a side inlet. The
water was deep to the shore and the harbour as safe as a house. The
boys from England had arrived, and a small cottage had been erected,
tucked away in the trees. It was very small, and very damp, the inside
of the walls being white with frost in the morning until the fire had
been under way for some time. But it was a merry crowd, emerging from
various little hutlets around among the trees, which greeted the
Strathcona.

The big boiler, the "bugaboo" of my dreams all summer, lay on the
bank. "How did you get it there?" was my first query. "We warped the
vessel close to the land, and then hove her close ashore and put skids
from the rocks off to her. On these we slid the boiler, all hands
hauling it up with our tackles."

Having left the few supplies which we had with us, for the Strathcona
has no hold or carrying space, we returned to the hospital, mighty
grateful for the successful opening of the venture. The survey had
been complet