, the ships anchored at
Five Fathom Hole off York Factory, Port Nelson.

[Illustration: NELSON AND HAYES RIVERS (From Robson)]

The Selkirk settlers had been sixty-one days on board, and they were
still a year away from their Promised Land. Champlain's colonists of
Acadia and Quebec had come to anchorage on a land set like a jewel amid
silver waters and green hills, but the Selkirk settlers have as yet seen
only rocks barren of verdure as a billiard ball, vales amidst the domed
hills of Hudson Straits, dank with muskeg, and silent as the very realms
of death itself, but for the flacker of wild fowl, the roaring of the
floundering {385} walrus herds, or the lonely tinkling of mountain
streams running from the ice fields to the mossy valleys bordering the
northern sea. It needed a robust hope, or the blind faith of an almost
religious zeal, to penetrate the future and see beyond these sterile
shores the Promised Land, where homes were to be built, and plenty to
abound. If pioneer struggles leave a something in the blood of the race
that makes for national strength and permanency, the difference between
the home finding of the West and the home finding of the East is worth
noting.

There were, of course, no preparations for the colonists at York Fort,
for the factor could not know they were coming, or anything of Selkirk's
plans, till the annual ships arrived. On the chance of finding better
hunting farther from the fort, MacDonell withdrew his people from Hayes
River, north across the marsh to a sheltered bank of the River Nelson.
Winter had set in early. A whooping blizzard met the pilgrims as they
marched along an Indian trail through the brushwood. There is a legend
of Miles MacDonell, the governor, becoming benighted between York Fort
and Nelson River, and losing his way in the storm. According to the
story, he beat about the brushwood for twenty-four hours before he
regained his bearings. Rude huts of rough timber and thatch roof with
logs extemporized for berths and benches were knocked up for wintering
quarters on Nelson River, and the next nine months were passed hunting
deer for store of provisions, and building flatboats to ascend the
interior. All winter a mutinous spirit was at work among the young
clerks, which MacDonell, no doubt, ascribed to the machinations of
Nor'westers; but the chief factor quickly quelled mutiny by cutting off
supplies, and all hands were ready to proceed when the fur briga