In winter, Ballantyne says, days, if not weeks, passed without the arrival of a visitor, unless it were a post from the interior, or some Cree trader of the neighbourhood, or some hungry Indian seeking food. The cold was the chief feature of remark and consideration. At times the spirit thermometer indicated 65 deg. below zero, and the uselessness of the mercury thermometer was then shown by a pot of quicksilver being made into bullets and remaining solid. Every precaution was taken to erect strong buildings, which had double windows and double doors, and yet in the very severe weather, water contained in a vessel has been known to freeze in a room where a stove red hot was doing its best. It is worthy of notice, however, that even in Arctic regions, a week or ten days is as long as such severe weather continues, and mild intervals come regularly. On the Bay the coming of spring is looked for with great expectation, and when it does come, about the middle of May, it sets in with a "rush;" the sap rises in the shrubs and bushes, the buds burst out, the rivers are freed from ice, and indeed, so rapid and complete is the change, that it may be said there are only two seasons--summer and winter--in these latitudes. As summer progresses the fare of dried geese, thousands of which are stored away for winter use, of dried fish and the white ptarmigan and wood partridge that linger about the bushes and are shot for food, is superseded by the arrival of myriads of ducks and geese and the use of the fresh fish of the Bay. In many of the posts the food throughout the whole year is entirely flesh diet, and not a pound of farinaceous food is obtainable. This leads to an enormous consumption of the meat diet in order to supply a sufficient amount of nourishment. An employé will sometimes eat two whole geese at a meal. In Dr. Rae's celebrated expedition from Fort Churchill, north along the shore of Hudson Bay, on his search for Sir John Franklin, the amount of supplies taken was entirely inadequate for his party for the long period of twenty-seven months, being indeed only enough for four months' full rations. In Rae's instructions from Sir George Simpson it is said, "For the remaining part of your men you cannot fail to find subsistence, animated as you are and they are by a determination to fulfil your mission at the cost of danger, fatigue, and privation. Whenever the natives can live, I can have no fears with respect to you, more particularly as you will have the advantage of the Eskimos, not merely in your actual supplies, but also in the means of recruiting and renewing them."