summer. The buildings of the Factory were also badly planned, and badly
constructed, so that the Fort was unsuitable for quartering the
Colonists. Besides this, Messrs. Cook and Auld, the former Governor of
York Factory, and the latter chief officer of Fort Churchill, having the
old Hudson's Bay Company's spirit of dislike of Colonists, decided that
the new settlers, being an innovation and an evil, should have separate
quarters built for them at a distance from the Fort.

Poor Colonists! Miles Macdonell is wearied with them in their
complaining spirit, berates them for indolence, and finds fault with
their awkwardness as workmen. To Macdonell, who was a Canadian,
accustomed as a soldier and frontiersman to dealing with canoes, boats,
and every means of land transport, the sturdy, steady going Orkneyman
was slow and clumsy.

The inexperienced new settler thus gets rather brusque treatment from
the Colonial, more a good deal than he deserves.

Accordingly it was decided to erect log dwellings for the workmen and
the settlers on the higher ground north of the Nelson River. Several
miles distant from the Factory itself, Spruce trees of considerable size
grew along the river, and so all hands were put to work to have huts or
shanties erected to protect the Colonists from the severe cold of
winter, which would soon be upon them, although on October 5th Miles
Macdonell wrote home to Lord Selkirk: "The weather has been mild and
pleasant for some days past."

The erection of suitable houses, that is homely on the exterior, but
warm in the coldest weather, was superintended by Miles
Macdonell--himself a Colonial and one aware of the precautions needing