"The main party arrived on the return journey at Pembina on August 17th, after a journey of two months and two days. In due time the settlement was reached, and the trip being a successful one, the returns on this occasion may be taken as a fair annual average. An approximation to the truth is all we can arrive at, however. Our estimate is nine hundred pounds weight of buffalo meat per cart, a thousand being considered the full load, which gives one million and eighty-nine thousand pounds in all, or something more than two hundred pounds weight for each individual, old and young, in the settlement. As soon as the expedition arrived, the Hudson's Bay Company, according to usual custom, issued a notice that it would take a certain specified quantity of provisions, not from each fellow that had been on the plains, but from each old and recognized hunter. The established price at this period for the three kinds over head, fat, pemmican, and dried meat, was two pence a pound. This was then the Company's standard price; but there is generally a market for all the fat they bring. During the years 1839, 1840, and 1841, the Company expended five thousand pounds on the purchase of plain provisions, of which the hunters got last year the sum of twelve hundred pounds, being rather more money than all the agricultural class obtained for their produce in the same year. It will be remembered that the Company's demand affords the only regular market or outlet in the Colony, and, as a matter of course, it is the first supplied."
MAP OF LABRADOR AND THE KING'S DOMAINS.
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[CHAPTER XXXVII.]
LIFE ON THE SHORES OF HUDSON BAY AND LABRADOR.
The bleak shores unprogressive—Now as at the beginning—York Factory—Description of Ballantyne—The weather—Summer comes with a rush—Picking up subsistence—The Indian trade—Inhospitable Labrador—Establishment of Ungava Bay—McLean at Fort Chimo—Herds of cariboo—Eskimo crafts—"Shadowy Tartarus"—The king's domains—Mingan—Mackenzie—The Gulf settlements—The Moravians—Their four missions—Rigolette, the chief trading post—A school for developing character—Chief Factor Donald A. Smith—Journeys along the coast—A barren shore.
Life on the shores of Hudson Bay is as unchangeable as the shores and scenery of the coast are monotonous. The swampy, treeless flats that surround the Bay simply change from the frozen, snow-clad expanse which stretches as far as the eye can see in winter, to the summer green of the unending grey willows and stunted shrubs that cover the swampy shores. For a few open months the green prevails, and then nature for eight months assumes her winding sheet of icy snow.