In the Yellowhead Pass. From a photograph.In the Yellowhead Pass. From a photograph.
In the Yellowhead Pass. From a photograph.In the Yellowhead Pass. From a photograph.
At St Ann a guide was engaged to lead the long train of pack-horses through the pass from Jasper House on the east to Yellowhead Lake on the west. Colin Fraser, son of the famous piper for Sir George Simpson of the Hudson's Bay Company, danced a Highland fling at the gate of the fort to speed thedeparting guests. And to the skirl of the bagpipes the procession wound away westward bound for the mountains.
Instead of the thirty miles a day which they had made farther east, the travellers were now glad to cover ten miles a day. Fallen trees lay across the trail in impassable ramparts and floods filled the gullies. Scouts went ahead blazing trees to show the way. Bushwhackers followed, cutting away windfall and throwing logs into sloughs. Horses sank to their withers in seemingly bottomless muskegs,[2] so that packs had to be cut off and the unlucky bronchos pulled out by all hands straining on a rope.
Somewhere between the rivers Pembina and M'Leod the travellers were amazed to see what the wise ones in the party thought a volcano—a continuous and self-fed fire burning on the crown of a hill. Science of a laterday pronounced this a gas well burning above some subterranean coal seam.
At length the Overlanders were ascending the banks of the M'Leod, whose torrential current warned them of rising ground. Three times in one day windfall and swamp forced the party to ford the stream for passage on the opposite side. The oxen swam and the ox-carts floated and the packs came up the bank dripping. For eleven days in August every soul of the company, including Mrs Shubert's babies, travelled wet to the skin. At night great log fires were kindled and the Overlanders sat round trying to dry themselves out. Then the trail lifted to the foothills. And on the evening of the 15th of August there pierced through the clouds the snowy, shining, serrated peaks of the Rockies.
Upper M'Leod River. From a photograph.Upper M'Leod River. From a photograph.
Upper M'Leod River. From a photograph.Upper M'Leod River. From a photograph.
A cheer broke from the ragged band. Just beyond the shining mountains lay—Fortune. What cared these argonauts, who had tramped across the width of the continent, that the lofty mountains raised a sheer wall between them and their treasure? Cheer on cheer rang from the encampment. Men with clothes in tatters pitched caps in air, proud that they had proved themselves kings of their own fate. It is, perhaps, well that we have to climb ourmountains step by step; else would many turn back. But there were no faint-hearts in the camp that night. Even the Irishwoman's two little children came out and gazed at what they could not understand.
The party now crossed a ravine to the main stream of the Athabaska. It was necessary to camp here for a week. A huge raft was built of pine saplings bound together by withes. To the stern of this was attached a tree, the branch end dipping in the water, as a sweep and rudder to keep the craft to its course. On this the Overlanders were ferried across the Athabaska. And so they entered the Yellowhead Pass.
[1] See the map inThe Adventurers of England on Hudson Bayin this Series.
[2] Perhaps the distinction should be made here between the muskeg and the slough. The slough was simply any depression in the ground filled with mud and water. The muskeg was permanent wet ground resting on soft mud, covered over on the top with most deceiving soft green moss which looked solid, but which quaked to every step and gave to the slightest weight. Many muskegs west of Edmonton have been formed by beavers damming the natural drainage of a small river for so many centuries that the silt and humus washed down from the mountains have formed a surface of deep black muck.
Like many lowland dwellers, the Overlanders had thought of a pass as a door opening through a rock wall. What they found was a forested slope flanked on both sides by mighty precipices down which poured cataracts with the sound of the voice of many waters. Huge hemlocks lay criss-crossed on the slope. Above could be seen the green edge of a glacier, and still higher the eternal snows of the far peaks. The tang of ice was in the air; but in the valleys was all the gorgeous bloom of midsummer—the gaudy painter's brush, the shy harebell, the tasselled windflower, and a few belated mountain roses. Long-stemmed, slender cornflowers and bluebells held up their faces to the sun, blue as the sky above them. Everywhere was an odour as of incense, the fragrance of the great hemlocks, of grasses frost-touched at night and sunburnt by day, of the unpolluted earth-mould of a thousand years.
Where was the trail? None was visible! The captain led the way, following blazes chipped in the bark of the trees, zigzagging up the slope from right to left, from left to right, hanging to the horse's mane to lift weight from the saddle, with a rest for breathing at each turn as they climbed; and, when the ridge of the foothill was surmounted, a world of peacock-blue lakes lay below, fringed by forests. The cataracts looked like wind-blown ribbons of silver. Instead of dipping down, the trail led to the rolling flank of another great foothill, and yet another, round sharp saddlebacks connecting the mountains. Here, ox-carts were dangerous and had to be abandoned. It was with difficulty that the oxen could be driven along the narrow ledges.
Jasper House, Whitefish Lake, the ruins of Henry House, they saw from the height of the pass. One foaming stream they forded eight times in three hours, driven from side to side by precipice and windfall; and in places they could advance only by ascending the stream bed. This was risky work on a fractious pony, and some of the riders preferred wading to riding. At noon on the 22nd of August the riders crossed a small stream and set up their tents on the border of a sedgy lake. Thensomebody noticed that the lake emptied west, not east; and a wild halloo split the welkin. They had crossed the Divide. They were on the headwaters of the Fraser, where a man could stand astride the stream; and the Fraser led to the Cariboo gold-diggings. They still had four hundred miles to travel. Their boots were in shreds and their clothes in tatters; but what were four hundred miles to men who had tramped almost three thousand?
But their progress had been so slow that the provisions were running short. The first snow of the mountains falls in September, and it was already near the end of August. There was not a moment to lose in resting. What had been a lure of hope now became a goad of desperation. So it is with all life's highest emprises. We plunge in led by hope. We plunge on spurred by fate. When the reward is won, only God and our own souls know that, even if we would, we could not have done otherwise than go on.
Those travellers who had insisted on bringing oxen had now to kill them for meat. Chipmunks were shot for food. So were many worn-out horses. Hides were used to resole boots and make mitts. Not far from Moose Lake the last bag of pemmican was eaten.Perhaps it was a good thing at this time that the band of Overlanders began to spread out and scatter along the trail; for hungry men in large groups are a tragic danger to themselves. Those of the advance-party were now some ten days ahead of their companions in the rear. Mrs MacNaughton, whose husband was with the rear party, of which we shall hear more anon, relates the story of a young fellow so ravenous that he fried the deer-thong he had bought for a tump-line back at one of the company's forts. Fortunately, somewhere west of Moose Lake, the travellers came on a band of Shuswap Indians who traded for matches and powder enough salmon and cranberry cakes to stave off actual famine.
Trees with chipped bark pointed the way down the Fraser. For three days the party followed the little stream that had come out of the lake hardly wider than the span of a man's stride. With each mile its waters swelled and grew wilder. On the third day windfall and precipice drove the riders back from the river bed into the heavy hemlock forest, where festoons of Spanish moss overhead almost shut out the light of the sun and all sense of direction. And when they came back to the bank of the stream they saw awild cataract cutting its way through a dark canyon. There was no mistake. This was the Fraser, and it was living up to its reputation.
And yet the Overlanders were sorely puzzled. There were no more blazes on the trees to point the way; and, if this was the Fraser, it seemed to flow almost due north. Where was Cariboo? Mr M'Micking, who was acting as captain, tried to find out from the Indians. They made him a drawing showing that if he crossed another watershed he would come on a white man's wide pack-road. That must lead to Cariboo; but the snow lay already a foot deep on this road; and unless the Overlanders hastened they would be snowbound for the winter. On the other hand, if the white men continued to follow the wild river canyon north, it would bring them to Fort George on the main Fraser in ten days. There was no time to waste on chance travelling. The Overlanders knew that somewhere south from Moose Lake must lie the headwaters of the Thompson, which would bring them to Kamloops. Was that what the Indians meant by their drawings of a white man's road? If that were true, between Moose Lake and the Thompson must lie the land of their desire,Cariboo; but to cross another unknown divide in winter seemed risky. To follow the bend of the Fraser north might be the long way round, but it was sure.
It was decided to let the party separate. Let those with provisions still remaining try to push overland to Cariboo. If they failed to find it, they could build cabins and winter on their pack animals. Twenty men joined this group. The rest decided to stick to the river. Behind were straggling a score more of the travellers, who were left to follow as they could. Mrs Shubert with her children joined the band going overland to find the Thompson.
The Indians traded canoes for horses and showed the Overlanders how to put rafts together to run the Fraser. Axes had been worn almost to the haft. Cutting the huge trees and splitting them into suitable timbers was slow work. It was September before the rafts were ready to be launched. There were four. Each had a heavy railing round it like that of a ferry, with some flat stones on which fires could be lighted to cook meals without pausing to land. When we recall the experiences of Mackenzie and Fraser on this river, it seems almost incredible that these landsmen madethe descent on rafts with their few remaining ponies and oxen tied to the railings; yet so they did. If we imagine rafts, with horses and oxen tied to the railings, trying to run the whirlpool below Niagara, we shall have some conception of what this meant.
The canoes sheered out of the way and the rafts were unmoored. The Scarborough raft, with men from Whitby and Scarborough, near Toronto, swirled out to midstream on the afternoon of the 1st of September. 'Poor, poor white men,' sighed the Indians; 'no more see white men'; but the men in the canoes rapped the gunnels with their paddles and uttered rousing cheers. Then theOttawaand theNiagaraand theHuntingdonrafts slipped out on the current. All went well for four days. Sweeps made of trees with the branch ends turned down and long, slim poles kept the rafts in mid-current. Meals were cooked as the unwieldy craft glided along the river-bank. Two or three men kept guard at night, so that the rafts were delayed for only a few hours during the darkest part of the night. The sun shone hot at midday and there were hard frosts at night; but the rest in this sort of travel was wonderfully refreshing after four months of toil across prairie andmountain. But on the afternoon of the 5th of September the rafts began to bounce and swirl. The banks raced to the rear, and before the crews realized it, a noise as of breaking seas filled the air, and theScarboroughwas riding her first rapid. Luckily, the water was deep and the rocks well submerged. TheScarboroughran the rapid without mishap and the other rafts followed. On the next day, however, the waters 'collected' and began running in leaps and throwing back spume. Some one shouted 'Breakers! head ashore!' and the galloping rafts bumped on the bank of the river. The banks here were steep for portaging; and the Scarborough boys, brought up on the lake-front, east of Toronto, decided, come what might, to run the rapids. They let go the mooring-rope and went churning into a whirlpool of yeasty spray. All hands bent their strength to the poles. The raft dipped out of sight, but was presently seen riding safely and calmly below the rapids.
Those watching theScarboroughfrom the bank breathed freely again and plucked up heart; but the worst was yet ahead. The oily calm below the first rapid dropped into another maelstrom of angry waters. Into this theScarboroughwas drawn by the terrible undertow. For a moment the watchers on the bank could see nothing but the horns of the bellowing, frightened oxen tied to the railing. Then the raft was mounting the waves again. The seaworthiness of a raft is, of course, well known. It may dip under water, or even split, but it seldom upsets and never swamps or sinks. Before the other rafts ran the rapids, two of them were first lightened of their loads. The men preferred to pack their provisions over the precipices rather than take the risk of losing them in the rapid. Nor was the packing child's play. There was a narrow portage-trail along the ledges of the rocks, and where the slabs of granite had split off Indians had laid rickety poles across. Over these frail bridges the packers, with great difficulty, carried the loads of the two rafts. Fortunately most of them had long since discarded boots for moccasins.
All the rafts came through safely. The canoes were not so fortunate. When theScarboroughreached a sand-bar at the foot of the rapids, the men were surprised to find three of their Toronto friends, who had gone ahead in a canoe, now stranded high and dry. The canoe had sidled to the waves, swamped, and sunk with everything the Toronto menowned, including their coats, tents, and boots. For two days they had been awaiting the coming of the rafts. They were almost dead from exposure and hunger.
Nine canoes in all were wrecked at this spot. One split on the reef. Another was caught in the backwater. Others sank in the whirlpool below the rapids. Others went under at the first leap into the cataract. Two of the canoes had foolishly been lashed abreast. They sidled, shipped a billow, and sank. All the men clung to the gunnels; but one who was a powerful swimmer struck out for the shore. The canoes stranded on the shore below and the clinging men saved themselves. When they looked for their friend who had struck out for the shore, he was no longer to be seen. These men were all from Goderich, brought up on the banks of Lake Huron.
A similar fate befell a crew of four men from Toronto. Two of them undertook to portage provisions along the bank of the canyon, while the other two, named Carpenter and Alexander, tried to run the canoe down the rapids. The episode has some interest for students of psychology. Carpenter walked down the bank of the canyon a short distance to reconnoitre the different channels of therapids. He was seen to take out his notebook and write an entry. He then put the note-book in the inner pocket of his coat, took off the coat, and slung it in a tree on the bank. When he came back to the canoe, he seemed preoccupied. The canoe ripped on a rock in midstream, flattened, and sank. Carpenter went down insensible as though his head had struck and he had been stunned. Alexander was washed ashore. He found himself on the side of the bank opposite the rest of the party. Going below to calmer waters, he swam across. Carpenter's coat hung on the trees. In the pocket was the note-book, in which Alexander read the astounding words: 'Arrived at Grand Canyon. Ran the canyon and was drowned.' Carpenter left a wife and child in Toronto, for whom, evidently, he had written the message. But if he was of sound mind, desiring to live, and so certain of death that he was able to write his own fate in the past tense, why did he attempt the rapids? His friends had no explanation of the curious incident.
There is another gruesome story of a sand-bar in the very middle of this raging canyon. It will be remembered that some of the Overlanders had straggled far to the rear. Sometime before spring a party of them attempted to run this canyon. They were never again seen alive. Some treasure-seekers who came over the trail in spring stranded on this sand-bar. They found the bodies of the missing men. All but one had been torn and partly devoured. It need not be told here that no wild beast could have stemmed the rapids from either side. Unless wolves or cougars had accidentally been washed to the sand-bar, and washed away again, the wild solitude must have witnessed a horror too terrible to be told; for the body of the man who had apparently died last was fully clothed and unmolested. As absolutely nothing more is known of what happened than has been set down here, it seems well that there is no record of the names of these castaways.
The walls of the river lowered and widened, the current slackened, and the surviving canoes and rafts were presently gliding peacefully down a smooth stream. That night the Overlanders slept dead with weariness; but a fearful depression rested on the company. Gold had begun to collect its toll, and the price appalled every soul. Who would be the next? How soon would the unknown river turn west and south? Where was Fort George? What perils yet lay between the fort and the gold camp?
As the heavy mists lifted at daybreak, the travellers observed that the river was narrowing again and that the wooded banks had begun to fly past very swiftly. There was no mistaking the signs. They were approaching more rapids. But the trick of guiding the craft down rapids had now been learned; so the flotilla rode the furious waters unharmed for fifteen miles.
It was almost dark when canoes and rafts swung round a curve in the river and saw a flag waving above the little walled fur-post of Fort George. The tired wanderers were welcomed in by clerks too amazed to speak, while a howling chorus of husky-dogs set up their serenade. A young Englishman, who had joined the Overlanders at St Paul, died from the effects of exposure a few minutes after being carried into the fort. Next morning the body was rolled in blankets, placed in a canoe, and buried under a rude wooden cross, with stones piled above the grave to prevent the ravaging of huskies and wolves.
The chief factor was away, but the young clerks in charge sent Indians along to pilot the Overlanders through the rapids below Fort George, known as the most dangerous on the Fraser. These rapids, it will be recalled, had wrecked Alexander Mackenzie and had almost cost Simon Fraser his life. But the treasure-seekers did not have to go as far south as Alexandria, where Mackenzie had turned back. With guides who knew the waters, they ran the rapids below Fort George safely, and moored at Quesnel, the entrance to Cariboo, on the 11th of September—four months after they had left Canada.
Quesnel was at this time a rude settlement of perhaps a dozen log shacks—chiefly bunkhouses and provision-stores. North of Yale the Cariboo Road had not yet been opened, and all provisions had been brought in from the lower Fraser by pack-horse and dog-train at enormous cost and risk. Food sold at extortionate prices. A meal cost two dollars and fifty cents, for beans, bacon, and coffee. Salmon, of course, was cheap. Fortunately, there was little whisky; so, though tattered miners were everywhere in the woods, order was maintained without vigilance committees. On one spectacle the far-travelled ragged Overlanders feasted their tired eyes. They saw miners everywhere along the banks of creeks washing gold. But there were more gold-seekers than claims, and those without claims were full of complaints and fears for the winter. They declared the country was over-rated and a humbug. The question was how 'to get out' to Victoria. Overlanders, who had tramped across the breadth of a continent, did not relish the prospect, as one Yankee miner described it, of 'hoofing it five hundred miles farther.' Some of the disappointed Overlanders floated on down to Alexandria, where they sold their rafts and took jobs on thegovernment road which was being constructed along the canyon. This ensured them safety from starvation for the winter at least.
Other Overlanders followed these first pioneers 'the plains across.' And we have seen that some of those who had crossed the prairie with the first party had fallen behind. These stragglers did not reach Yellowhead Pass till the first week of September. They were entirely out of food; but they had matches, and each box of fifty bought a huge salmon from the Shuswaps.
Some of the men pushed ahead, built a raft, and launched it on the Fraser. The raft ripped on a rock in midstream and stuck there at an angle of forty-five degrees. Money, tools, food, and clothing slithered into the tow of the rapids, while the men clung in desperation to the upper railing of the wreck. One man let go and dropped into the water. Swimming and drifting and rolling over and over, he gained the shore, and hurried back to the pass with word of the accident. Friends, accompanied by Indians, came in canoes to the rescue, and, by means of ropes, every man was brought off the wrecked raft alive.
But the party now stood in a more desperate predicament than ever, for lack of food andclothing. The Shuswaps saved the whites from starvation. They took the white men to a pool in the Fraser, where salmon, exhausted from the long run up the river, could be speared or clubbed by the boat-load. And while some of the men chopped down trees to build dugout canoes, others speared, cleaned, and dried the salmon. Night and day they worked, and forgot sleep in their desperate haste. At length they launched their craft on the Fraser. On the way down the dangerous canyon they saw the wrecked canoes of those who had gone before. The tenth day after leaving Yellowhead Pass they reached Fort George. Their story has been told by Mrs MacNaughton, whose husband was of the party. They arrived at Fort George mostly barefoot, coatless, and trousers and shirts in tatters. Their hair and beards were long and unkempt. It is supposed that they must have lost the salmon in some of the rapids, or else the supply was insufficient; for they were so weak from hunger that they had to be carried into the fort. They arrived at Quesnel a month after the first Overlanders, when the snow was too deep in the mountains for prospecting or mining. The majority of this party also took work on the government road.
Meanwhile, how had fared that band of the Overlanders who had gone over the hills south from the pass in search of the upper branches of the Thompson? A Shuswap accompanied them as guide, and for a few days there was a well-defined game-trail. Then the trail meandered off into a dense forest of hemlock and windfall, which had to be cut almost every mile of the way. They did not average six miles a day; but they finally came to the steep bank of a wild river flowing south which they judged must be a branch of the Thompson. The mountains were so steep that it was impossible to proceed farther with horses and oxen; so they abandoned these in the woods, and cut trees for rafts. For seven days they ran rapid after rapid. One of the rafts stranded on a rock and remained for two days before companions came to the rescue. At another point a canoe was smashed in midstream. The crew struggled to a slippery rock and hung to the ledge. A man named Strachan attempted to swim ashore to signal distress to those above. They saw him ride the waves. Then a roll of angry waters swept over him and he passed out of sight. His companions clung to the rock till another canoe came shooting down-stream, when lineswere hoisted to the castaways, and they were hauled ashore.
Where the Clearwater comes into the Thompson they found the fur-trader's horse-trail and tramped the remaining hundred miles overland south to Kamloops. On the last lap of their terrible march all were so exhausted they could scarcely drag themselves forward. Some would lie down and sleep, then creep on a few miles. About twenty miles from the mouth of the Thompson they came to a field of potatoes planted by some rancher of Kamloops. The starving Overlanders could scarcely credit their eyes. No one occupied the windowless log cabin; but there was the potato patch—an oasis of food in a desert of starvation. They paused long enough at the cabin to boil a great kettleful and to feast ravenously. This gave them strength to tramp on to Kamloops. We saw that the Irish mother, Mrs Shubert, with her two children, accompanied this party. The day after reaching Kamloops she gave birth to a child.
Did the Overlanders find the gold which each man's rainbow hopes had dreamed? They had followed the rainbow over the ends of earth. Was the pot of gold at the end ofthe rainbow? You will find an occasional Overlander passing the sunset of his days in quiet retreat at Yale or Hope or Quesnel or Barkerville. He does not wear evidence of great earthly possessions, though he may refer wistfully to the golden age of those long-past adventurous days. The leaders who survived became honoured citizens of British Columbia. Few came back to the East. They passed their lives in the wild, free, new land that had given them such harsh experiences.
Fortunately, in that winter of '62-'63, there was a great deal of work to be done in the mining country, and men were in high demand. The ordinary wage was ten dollars a day, and men who could be trusted, and who were brave enough to pack the gold out to the coast, received twenty and even as high as fifty dollars a day. There is a letter, written by Sir Matthew Begbie, describing how the mountain trails were infested that winter by desperadoes lying in wait for the miners who came staggering over the trail literally weighted down with gold. The miners found what the great banks have always found, that the presence of unused gold is a nuisance and a curse. They had to lug the gold in leather sacks with them to their work, and back with them to their shacks, and they always carried firearms ready for use. There was very little shooting at the mines, but if a bad man 'turned up missing,' no oneasked whether he had 'hoofed' it down the trail, or whether he hung as a sign of warning from a pole set horizontally at a proper height between two trees. In a mining camp there is no mercy for the crook. If the trail could have told tales, there would have been many a story of dead men washed up on the bars, of sneak-thieves given thirty-nine lashes and like the scapegoat turned out into the mountain wilds—a rough-and-ready justice administered without judge or jury.
But a woman was as safe on the trail as in her own home—a thing that civilization never understands about a wild mining camp. Mrs Cameron, wife of the famous Cariboo Cameron, lived with her husband on his claim till she died, and many other women lived in the camps with their husbands. When the road opened, there was a rush of hurdy-gurdy girls for dance-halls; but that did not modify the rough chivalry of an unwritten law. These hurdy-gurdy girls, who tiptoed to the concertina, the fiddle, and the hand-organ, were German; and if we may believe the poet of Cariboo, they were something like the Glasgow girls described by Wolfe as 'cold to everything but a bagpipe—I wrong them—there is not one that does not melt awayat the sound of money.' Sings the poet of Cariboo:
They danced a' nicht in dresses lichtFra' late until the early, O!But O, their hearts were hard as flint,Which vexed the laddies sairly, O!
The dollar was their only love,And that they loved fu' dearly, O!They dinna care a flea for men,Let them court hooe'er sincerely, O!
Cariboo was what the miners call a 'he-camp.' Not unnaturally, the 'she-camps' heard 'the call from Macedonia.' The bishop of Oxford, the bishop of London, the lord mayor of London, and a colonial society in England gathered up some industrious young women as suitable wives for the British Columbia miners. Alack the day, there was no poet to send letters to the outside world on this handling of Cupid's bow and arrow! The comedy was pushed in the most business-like fashion. Threescore young girls came out under the auspices of the society and the Church, carefully shepherded by a clergyman and a stern matron. They reached Victoria in September of '62 and were housed in the barracks. Miners camped on every inch of ground from which the barracks could bewatched; and when the girls passed to and from their temporary lodging, their progress was like a royal procession through a silent, gaping, but most respectful lane of whiskered faces. A man looking anything but respect would have been knocked down on the spot. We laugh now! Victoria did not laugh then. It was all taken very seriously. On the instant, every girl was offered some kind of situation, which she voluntarily and almost immediately exchanged for matrimony. In all, some ninety girls came out under these auspices in '62-'63. The respectable girls fitted in where they belonged. The disreputable also found their own places. And the mining camp began to take on an appearance of domesticity and home.
Matthew Begbie, later, like Douglas, given a title for his services to the Empire, had, as we have seen, first come out under direct appointment by the crown; and when parliamentary government was organized in British Columbia his position was confirmed as chief justice. He had less regard for red tape than most chief justices. Like Douglas, he first maintained law and order and then looked up to see if he had any authority for it. No man ever did more for a mining camp than SirMatthew Begbie. He stood for the rights of the poorest miner. In private life he was fond of music, art, and literature; but in public life he was autocratic as a czar and sternly righteous as a prophet. He was a vigilance committee in himself through sheer force of personality. Crime did not flourish where Begbie went. Chinaman or Indian could be as sure of justice as the richest miner in Cariboo. From hating and fearing him, the camp came almost to worship him.
Many are the stories of his circuits. Once a jury persisted in bringing in a verdict of manslaughter in place of murder.
'Prisoner,' thundered Begbie, 'it is not a pleasant duty to me to sentence youonlyto prison for life. You deserve to be hanged. Had the jury performed their duty, I might have the painful satisfaction of condemning you to death. You, gentlemen of the jury, permit me to say that it would give me great pleasure to sentence you to be hanged each and every one of you, for bringing in a murderer guilty only of manslaughter.'
On another occasion, when an American had 'accidentally' shot an Indian, the coroner rendered a verdict 'worried to death by a dog.' Begbie ordered another inquest. Thistime the coroner returned a finding that the Indian 'had been killed by falling over a cliff.' Begbie on his own authority ordered the American seized and taken down to Victoria. On his way down the prisoner escaped from the constable. This type of hair-trigger gunmen at once fled the country when Begbie came.
Mr Alexander, one of the Overlanders of '62, tells how 'Begbie's decisions may not have been good law, but they were first-class justice.' His 'doctrine was that if a man were killed, some one had to be hanged for it; and the effect was salutary.' A man had been sandbagged in a Victoria saloon and thrown out to die. His companion in the saloon was arrested and tried. The circumstantial evidence was strong, and the judge so charged the jury. But the jury acquitted the prisoner. Dead silence fell in the court-room. The prisoner's counsel arose and requested the discharge of the man. Begbie whirled: 'Prisoner at the bar, the jury have said you are not guilty. You can go, and I devoutly hope the next man you sandbag will be one of the jury.' On another occasion a man was found stabbed on the Cariboo Road. The man with whom the dead miner had been quarrelling wasarrested, tried, and, in spite of strong evidence against him, acquitted. Begbie adjourned the court with the pious wish that the murderer should go out and cut the throats of the jury.
But, in spite of his harsh manner towards the wrong-doer, 'the old man,' as the miners affectionately called him, kept law and order. In the early days gold commissioners not only settled all mining disputes, but acted as judge and jury. Against any decision of the gold commissioners Begbie was the sole appeal, and in all the long years of his administration no decision of his was ever challenged.
The effect of sudden wealth on some of the hungry, ragged horde who infested Cariboo was of a sort to discount fiction. One man took out forty thousand dollars in gold nuggets. A lunatic escaped from a madhouse could not have been more foolish. He came to the best saloon of Barkerville. He called in guests from the highways and byways and treated them to champagne which cost thirty dollars and fifty dollars a bottle. When the rabble could drink no more champagne, he ordered every glass filled and placed on the bar. With one magnificent drunken gesture of vainglory he swept the glasses in a clattering crash to thefloor. There was still a basket of champagne left. He danced the hurdy-gurdy on that basket till he cut his feet. The champagne was all gone, but he still had some gold nuggets. There was a mirror in the bar-room valued at hundreds of dollars. The miner stood and proudly surveyed his own figure in the glass. Had he not won his dearest desire and conquered all things in conquering fortune? He gathered his last nuggets and hurled them in handfuls at the mirror, shattering it in countless pieces. Then he went out in the night to sleep under the stars, penniless. He settled down to work for the rest of his life in other men's mines.
The staid Overlanders, who had risked their lives to reach this wild land of desire, who had come from such church-going hamlets as Whitby, such Scottish-Presbyterian centres as Toronto and Montreal, hardly knew whether they were dreaming or living in a country of crazy pixies who delved in mud and water all day and weltered in champagne all night. The Cariboo poet sang their sentiments in these words:
I ken a body made a strike.He looked a little lord.He had a clan o' followersAmang a needy horde.
Whane'er he'd enter a saloon,You'd see the barkeep smile—His lordship's humble servant heWi'out a thought o' guile!
A twalmonth passed an' a' is gane,Baith freends and brandy bottle!An' noo the puir soul's left alaneWi' nocht to weet his throttle!
In Barkerville, which became the centre of Cariboo, saloons and dance-halls grew up overnight. Pianos were packed in on mules at a rate of a dollar a pound from Quesnel. Champagne in pint bottles sold at two ounces of gold. Potatoes retailed at ninety dollars a hundredweight. Nails were cheap at a dollar a pound. Milk was retailed frozen at a dollar a pound. Boots still cost fifty dollars. Such luxuries as mirrors and stoves cost as high as seven hundred dollars each. The hurdy-gurdy girls with true German thrift charged ten dollars or more a dance—not the stately waltz, but a wild fling to shake the rafters and tire out the stoutest miners.
A newspaper was published in Barkerville. And it was in it that James Anderson of Scotland first issuedJeames's Letters to Sawney.
Your letter cam' by the express,Eight shillin's carriage, naethin' less!You maybe like to ken what payMiners get here for ilka day?Jus' twa poond sterling', sure as death—It should be four, between us baith—For gin ye coont the cost o' livin',There's naethin' left to gang an' come on.Sawney, had ye yer taters hereAnd neeps and carrots—dinna speerWhat price; though I might tell ye weel,Ye'd ainly think me a leein' chiel.
The first twa years I spent out hereWerena sae ill ava';But hoo I've lived syne; my freend,There's little need to blaw.Like fitba' knockit back and fore,That's lang in reachin' goal,Or feather blown by ilka windThat whistles 'tween each pole—E'en sae my mining life has beenFor mony a weary day.
Later, when the dance-hall became the theatre of Barkerville, James Anderson used to sing his rhymes to the stentorious shouting and loud stamping of the shirt-sleeved audience.
He thinks his pile is made,An' he's goin' hame this fall,To join his dear auld mither,His faither, freends, and all.His heart e'en jumps wi' joyAt the thocht o' bein' there,An' mony a happy minuteHe's biggin' castles in the air!
But hopes that promised highIn the springtime o' the year,Like leaves o' autumn fa'When the frost o' winter's near.Sae his biggin' tumbles doon,Wi' ilka blast o' care,Till there's no stane astandin'O' his castles in the air.
When the railway first went through the Fraser Canyon, passengers looking out of the windows anywhere from Yale to Ashcroft were amazed to see something like a Jacob's ladder up and down the mountains, appearing in places to hang almost in mid-air. Between Yale and Lytton it hugged the mountain-side on what looked like a shelf of rock directly above the wildest water of the canyon. Crib-work of huge trees, resembling in the distance the woven pattern of a willow basket, projected out over the ledges like a bird's nest hung from some mountain eyrie. The traveller almost expected to see the thing sway and swing to the wind. Then the train would sweep through a tunnel, or swing round a sharp bend, and far up among the summits might be seen a mule-team, or a string of pack-horses winding round the shoulders of the rock. It seemed impossible that any man-madehighway could climb such perpendicular walls and drop down precipitous cliffs and follow a trail apparently secure only for a mountain goat. The first impression was that the thing must be an old Indian war-path, along which no enemy could pursue. But when the train paused at a water tank, and the traveller made inquiry, he was told that this was nothing less than the famous Cariboo Road, one of the wonders of the world.
The Cariboo Road. From a photograph.The Cariboo Road. From a photograph.
The Cariboo Road. From a photograph.The Cariboo Road. From a photograph.
As long as the discovery of gold was confined to the Fraser river-bars, the important matter of transportation gave the government no difficulty. Hudson's Bay steamers crossed from Victoria to Langley on the Fraser, which was a large fort and well equipped as a base of supplies for the workers in the wilderness. Stern-wheelers, canoes, and miscellaneous craft could, with care, creep up from Langley to Hope and Yale; and the fares charged afforded a good revenue to the Hudson's Bay Company. Even when prospectors struck above Yale, on up to Harrison Lake and across to Lillooet, or from the Okanagan to the Thompson, the difficulties of transportation were soon surmounted. A road was shortly opened from Harrison Lake to Lillooet, built by the miners themselves, under the direction of the RoyalEngineers; and, as to the Thompson, there was the well-worn trail of the fur-traders, who had been going overland to Kamloops for fifty years.
It was when gold was discovered higher up on the Fraser and in Cariboo, after the colony of British Columbia had taken its place on the political map, that Governor Douglas was put to the task of building a great road. Henceforth, for a few years at least, the miners would be the backbone, if not the whole body, of the new colony. How could the administration be carried on if the government had no road into the mining region?
And so the governor of British Columbia entered on the boldest undertaking in roadbuilding ever launched by any community of twenty thousand people. The Cariboo Road became to British Columbia what the Appian Way was to Rome. It was eighteen feet wide and over four hundred and eighty miles long. It was one of the finest roads ever built in the world. Yet it cost the country only two thousand dollars a mile, as against the forty thousand dollars a mile which the two transcontinental railways spent later on their roadbeds along the canyon. It was Sir James Douglas's greatest monument.