The long continued rains were held responsible, perhaps justly so, for many of the inconveniences and drawbacks which the colonists encountered. The company stoutly declared that to these unusual meteorological conditions was due the failure to build the road to the port which had been promised, and that the absence of the road prevented the transportation of the lumber for the construction of the hotel. This latter assertion was true beyond all question. The "hotel" was a subject of much comment and immoderate mirth. It existed on paper in spacious and imposing elegance; it was a splendid structure of the imagination. But let it not be thought for one moment that the hotel was wholly a myth. Not so; the situation would not have been half so funny if it had been. There stood the foundation for the immense building squarely across Central avenue, about a quarter of a mile back from the front line of the town. A large space had been cleared in the forest, and the centre of this opening was the hotel site. The foundation consisted of large logs of hard wood, sawed about four feet long and stood upright. They were set in cement on stone that was sunk slightly below the surface of the ground. How many of these logs there were I cannot say, but there was a small army of them, aligned across Central avenue and extending far to either side. Under the dim light of the stars they looked like a regiment of dwarfs advancing to attack the camp. Workmen were putting the finishing touches on this foundation when we arrived, but the work was soon discontinued altogether, leaving the wooden army to serve as an outpost of slowly advancing civilization. Of course, we always directed new arrivals to the "hotel" as soon as they came in over the "road" from the port! After a while we became so fond of the hotel joke that I think we should have been sorry to see the building completed. [Illustration: "THE HOTEL." _Photograph by V. K. Van De Venter, Jan. 23, 1900._]