And so we see the first Selkirk Colonists landed on the Hudson Bay
numbering at the outside seventy, a number not greatly different from
the French and Pilgrim Fathers and called on to pass through similar
trials in the severe winter of Hudson Bay. Their experience has been
less tragic than that of the other parties spoken of, but in it the same
elements of discomfort, dissension and disease certainly present
themselves. However distressing their winter was, the dramatic
conditions passed away, in a short time we shall be engaged in
commemorating the patience and the heroism of these settlers, and in
1912 we shall sing a new song--the epic of the Lord Selkirk Colonists.

But to be true we must look more closely at the trials, and sufferings
of the untried, and somewhat turbulent band, on their way to the Red
River.

York Factory as being the port of entry for the southern prairie country
was a place of some importance. As in the largest number of cases, other
than a few huts for workmen, and a few Indian families, the Fort was the
only centre of life in the whole region. Two rivers, the Nelson and the
Hayes, enter the Hudson Bay at this point--the Nelson being the more
northerly of the two. Between the two rivers is really a delta or low
swampy tongue of land. On the Nelson's north bank, the land near the Bay
is low, while inland there is a rising height. Five or six different
sites of forts are pointed out at this point. These have been built on
during the history of the Company, which dates back to 1670. In Lord
Selkirk's time the factory was more than half a mile from the Bay and
lay between the two rivers. Miles Macdonell states that it was on "low,
miry ground without a ditch." The stagnant water by which the post was
surrounded would be productive of much ill-health, were there a longer