FORT HOPE.

The site of the new fort was now finally determined on. It would be

impossible to find a better situation than on the level ground behind Cape

Bathurst, on the eastern bank of the lagoon Hobson determined to commence the

construction of the principal house at once. Meanwhile all must accommodate

themselves as best they could; and the sledges were ingeniously utilised to form

a provisional encampment.

His men being very skilful, the Lieutenant hoped to have the principal house

ready in a month. It was to be large enough to accommodate for a time the

nineteen persons of the party. Later, and before the excessive cold set in, if

there should be time, the barracks for the soldiers and the magazines for the

furs and skins were to be built. There was not much chance of getting it all

done before the end of September; and after that date, the winter, with its

first bitter frosts and long nights, would arrest all further progress.

Of the ten soldiers chosen by Captain Craventy, two-Marbre and Sabine-were

skilful hunters; the other eight handled the hatchet with as much address as the

musket. Like sailors, they could turn their hands to anything, and were now to

be treated more like workmen than soldiers, for they were to build a fort which

there was as yet no enemy to attack. Petersen, Belcher, Rae, Garry, Pond, Hope,

and Kellet formed a body of clever, zealous carpenters, under the able

superintendence of Mac-Nab, a Scotchman from Stirling, who had had

considerable experience in the building both of houses and boats. The men were

well provided with tools-hatchets, centre-bits, adzes, planes, hand-saws,

mallets, hammers, chisels, &c. &c. Rae was most skilful at blacksmith's

work, and with the aid of a little portable forge he was able to make all the

pins, tenons, bolts, nails, screws, nuts, &e., required in carpentry. They

had no mason in the party; but none was wanted, as all the buildings of the

factories in the north are of wood. Fortunately there were plenty of trees about

Cape Bathurst, although as Hobson had already remarked to Mrs Barnett, there was

not a rock, a stone, not even a flint or a pebble, to be seen. The shore was

strewn with innumerable quantities of bivalve shells broken by the surf, and

with seaweed or zoophytes, mostly sea-urchins and asteriada; but the soil

consisted entirely of earth and sand, without a morsel of silica or broken

granite; and the cape itself was but an accumulation of soft earth, the

particles of which were scarcely held together by the vegetation with which it

was clothed.

In the afternoon of the same day, July 6th Hobson and Mac-Nab the carpenter

went to choose the site of the principal house on the plateau at the foot of

Cape Bathurst. From this point the view embraced the lagoon and the western

districts to a distance of ten or twelve miles. On the right, about four miles

off, towered icebergs of a considerable height. partly draped in mist; whilst on

the left stretched apparently boundless plains, vast steppes which it would be

impossible to distinguish from the frozen surface of the lagoon or from the sea

itself in the winter.

The spot chosen, Hobson and Mac-Nab set out the outer walls of the house with

the line. This outline formed a rectangle measuring sixty feet on the larger

side, and thirty on the smaller. The facade of the house would therefore have a

length of sixty feet it was to have a door and three windows on the side of the

promontory, where the inner court was to be situated, and four windows on the

side of the lagoon. The door was to open at the left corner, instead of in the

middle, of the back of the house, for the sake of warmth. This arrangement would

impede the entrance of the outer air to the further rooms, and add considerably

to the comfort of the inmates of the fort.

According to the simple plan agreed upon by the Lieutenant and his

master-carpenter, there were to be four compartments in the house: the first to

be an antechamber with a double door to keep out the wind; the second to serve

as a kitchen, that the cooking which would generate damp, might be all done

quite away from the living-rooms; the third, a large hall, where the daily meals

were to be served in common; and the fourth, to be divided into several cabins,

like the state-rooms on board ship.

The soldiers were to occupy the dining-hall provisionally, and a kind of

camp-bed was arranged for them at the end of the room. The Lieutenant, Mrs

Barnett, Thomas Black, Madge, Mrs Joliffe, Mrs Mac-Nab, and Mrs Rae were to

lodge in the cabins of the fourth compartment. They would certainly be packed

pretty closely; but it was only a temporary state of things, and when the

barracks were constructed, the principal house would be reserved to the officer

in command, his sergeant, Thomas Black, Mrs Barnett, and her faithful Madge, who

never left her. Then the fourth compartment might perhaps be divided into three

cabins, instead of four; for to avoid corners as much as possible is a rule

which should never be forgotten by those who winter in high latitudes Nooks and

corners are, in fact, so many receptacles of ice. The partitions impede the

ventilation; and the moisture, generated in the air, freezes readily, and makes

the atmosphere of the rooms unhealthy causing grave maladies to those who sleep

in them.

On this account many navigators who have to winter in the midst of ice have

one large room in the centre of their vessel, which is shared by officers and

sailors in common. For obvious reasons, however, Hobson could not adopt this

plan.

From the preceding description we shall have seen that the future house was

to consist merely of a ground-floor. The roof was to be high, and its sides to

slope considerably, so that water could easily run off them. The snow would,

however, settle upon them; and when once they were covered with it, the house

would be, so to speak, hermetically closed, and the inside temperature would be

kept at the same mean height. Snow is, in fact, a very bad conductor of beat: it

prevents it from entering, it is true; but, what is more important in an Arctic

winter, it also keeps it from getting out.

The carpenter was to build two chimneys-one above the kitchen, the other in

connection with the stove of the large dining-room, which was to heat it and the

compartment containing the cabins. The architectural effect of the whole would

certainly be poor; but the house would be as comfortable as possible, and what

more could any one desire?

Certainly an artist who had once seen it would not soon forget this winter

residence, set down in the gloomy Arctic twilight in the midst of snow-drifts,

half hidden by icicles, draped in white from roof to foundation, its walls

encrusted with snow, and the smoke from its fires assuming strangely-contorted

forms in the wind.

But now to tell of the actual construction of this house, as yet existing

only in imagination. This, of course, was the business of Mac-Nab and his men;

and while the carpenters were at work, the foraging party to whom the

commissariat was entrusted would not be idle. There was plenty for every one to

do.

The first step was to choose suitable timber, and a species of Scotch fir was

decided on, which grew conveniently upon the neighbouring hills, and seemed

altogether well adapted to the multifarious uses to which it would be put. For

in the rough and ready style of habitation which they were planning, there could

be no variety of material; and every part of the house-outside and inside walls,

flooring, ceiling, partitions, rafters, ridges, framework, and tiling-would have

to be contrived of planks, beams, and timbers. As may readily be supposed,

finished workmanship was not necessary for such a description of building, and

Mac-Nab was able to proceed very rapidly without endangering the safety of the

building. About a hundred of these firs were chosen and felled-they were neither

barked nor squared-and formed so many timbers, averaging some twenty feet in

length. The axe and the chisel did not touch them except at the ends, in order

to form the tenons and mortises by which they were to be secured to one another.

Very few days sufficed to complete this part of the work, and the timbers were

brought down by the dogs to the site fixed on for the principal building. To

start with, the site had been carefully levelled. The soil, a mixture of fine

earth and sand, had been beaten and consolidated with heavy blows. The brushwood

with which it was originally covered was burnt, and the thick layer of ashes

thus produced would prevent the damp from penetrating the floors. A clean and

dry foundation having been thus secured on which to lay the first joists,

upright posts were fixed at each corner of the site, and at the extremities of

the inside walls, to form the skeleton of the building. The posts were sunk to a

depth of some feet in the ground, after their ends had been hardened in the

fire; and were slightly hollowed at each side to receive the crossbeams of the

outer wall, between which the openings for the doors and windows had been

arranged for. These posts were held together at the top by horizontal beams well

let into the mortises, and consolidating the whole building. On these horizontal

beams, which represented the architraves of the two fronts, rested the high

trusses of the roof, which overhung the walls like the eaves of a chalet. Above

this squared architrave were laid the joists of the ceiling, and those of the

floor upon the layer of ashes.

The timbers, both in the inside and outside walls, were only laid side by

side. To insure their being properly joined, Rae the blacksmith drove strong

iron bolts through them at intervals; and when even this contrivance proved

insufficient to close the interstices as hermetically as was necessary, Mac-Nab

had recourse to calking, a process which seamen find invaluable in rendering

vessels water-tight; only as a substitute for tow he used a sort of dry moss,

with which the eastern side of the cape was covered, driving it into the

crevices with calking-irons and a hammer, filling up each hollow with layers of

hot tar, obtained without difficulty from the pine-trees, and thus making the

walls and boarding impervious to the rain and damp of the winter season.

The door and windows in the two fronts were roughly but strongly built, and

the small panes of the latter glazed with isinglass, which, though rough,

yellow, and almost opaque, was yet the best substitute for glass which the

resources of the country afforded; and its imperfections really mattered little,

as the windows were sure to be always open in fine weather; while during, the

long night of the Arctic winter they would be useless, and have to be kept

closed and defended by heavy shutters with strong bolts against the violence of

the gales. Meanwhile the house was being quickly fitted up inside. By means of a

double door between the outer and inner halls a too sudden change of temperature

was avoided, and the wind was prevented from blowing with unbroken force into

the rooms. The air-pumps, brought from Fort Reliance, were so fixed as to let in

fresh air whenever excessive cold prevented the opening of doors or windows -one

being made to eject the impure air from within, the other to renew the supply;

for the Lieutenant had given his whole mind to this important matter.

The principal cooking utensil was a large iron furnace, which had been

brought piecemeal from Fort Reliance, and which the carpenter put up without any

difficulty. The chimneys for the kitchen and ball, however, seemed likely to tax

the ingenuity of the workmen to the utmost, as no material within their reach

was strong enough for the purpose, and stone, as we have said before, was

nowhere to be found in the country around Cape Bathurst.

The difficulty appeared insurmountable, when the invincible Lieutenant

suggested that they should utilise the shells with which the shore was

strewed.

"Make chimneys of shells!" cried the carpenter.

"Yes, Mac-Nab," replied Hobson; "we must collect the shells, grind them, burn

them, and make them into lime, then mould the lime into bricks, and use them in

the same way."

"Let us try the shells, by all means," replied the carpenter; and so the idea

was put in practice at once, and many tons collected of calcareous shells

identical with those found in the lowest stratum of the Tertiary formations.

A furnace was constructed for the decomposition of the carbonate which is so

large an ingredient of these shells, and thus the lime required was obtained in

the space of a few hours. It would perhaps be too much to say that the substance

thus made was as entirely satisfactory as if it had gone through all the usual

processes; but it answered its purpose, and strong conical chimneys soon adorned

the roof, to the great satisfaction of Mrs Paulina Barnett, who congratulated

the originator of the scheme warmly on its success, only adding laughingly, that

she hoped the chimneys would not smoke.

"Of course they will smoke, madam," replied Hobson coolly; "all chimneys

do!"

All this was finished within a month, and on the 6th of August they were to

take possession of the new house.

While Mac-Nab and his men were working so hard, the foraging party, with the

Lieutenant at its head, had been exploring the environs of Cape Bathurst, and

satisfied themselves that there would be no difficulty in supplying the

Company's demands for fur and feathers, so soon as they could set about hunting

in earnest. In the meantime they prepared the way for future sport, contenting

themselves for the present with the capture of a few couples of reindeer, which

they intended to domesticate for the sake of their milk and their young. They

were kept in a paddock about fifty yards from the house, and entrusted to the

care of Mac-Nabs wife, an Indian woman, well qualified to take charge of

them.

The care of the household fell to Mrs Paulina Barnett, and this good woman,

with Madge's help, was invaluable in providing for all the small wants, which

would inevitably have escaped the notice of the men.

After scouring the country within a radius of several miles, the Lieutenant

notified, as the result of his observations, that the territory on which they

had established themselves, and to which he gave the name of Victoria Land, was

a large peninsula about one hundred and fifty square miles in extent, with very

clearly-defined boundaries, connected with the American continent by an isthmus,

extending from the lower end of Washburn Bay on the east, as fair as the

corresponding slope on the opposite coast. The Lieutenant next proceeded to

ascertain what were the resources of the lake and river, and found great reason

to be satisfied with the result of his examination. The shallow waters of the

lake teemed with trout, pike, and other available fresh-water fish; and the

little river was a favourite resort of salmon and shoals of white bait and

smelts. The supply of sea-fish was not so good; and though many a grampus and

whale passed by in the offing, the latter probably flying from the harpoons of

the Behring Strait fishermen there were no means of capturing them unless one by

chance happened to get stranded on the coast; nor would Hobson allow any of the

seals which abounded on the western shore to be taken until a satisfactory

conclusion should be arrived at as to how to use them to the best advantage.

The colonists now considered themselves fairly installed stalled in their new

abode, and after due deliberation unanimously agreed to bestow upon the

settlement the name of Fort Good Hope.

Alas! the auspicious title was never to be inscribed upon a map. The

undertaking, begun so bravely and with such prospects of success, was destined

never to be carried out, and another disaster would have to be added to the long

list of failures in Arctic enterprise.