Early in 1849 the sleepy quiet of Victoria, Vancouver Island, was disturbed by the arrival of straggling groups of ragged nondescript wanderers, who were neither trappers nor settlers. They carried blanket packs on their backs and leather bags belted securely round the waist close to their pistols. They did not wear moccasins after the fashion of trappers, but heavy, knee-high, hobnailed boots. In place of guns over their shoulders, they had picks and hammers and such stout sticks as mountaineer

By September, when mountain rivers are at their lowest, every bar on the Fraser from Yale to the forks of the Thompson was occupied. The Hudson's Bay steamer Otter made regular trips up the Fraser to Fort Langley; and from the fort an American steamer called the Enterprise , owned by Captain Tom Wright, breasted the waters as far as the swift current at Yale. At Yale was a city of tents and hungry men. Walter Moberly tells how, when he ascended the Fraser with Wright in the autumn of '58, the ge

Indian unrest was probably first among the causes which led the miners to organize themselves into leagues for protection. The Indians of the Fraser were no more friendly to newcomers now than they had been in the days of Alexander Mackenzie and Simon Fraser.[ 1 ] They now professed great alarm for their fishing-grounds. Men on the gold-bars were jostled and hustled, and pegs marking limits were pulled up. A danger lay in the rows of saloons along the water-front—the well-known danger of liquor

When the Cariboo fever reached the East, the public there had heard neither of the Indian massacres in Oregon nor that the Sioux were on the war-path in Dakota. Promoters who had never set foot west of Buffalo launched wild-cat mining companies and parcel express devices and stages by routes that went up sheer walls and crossed unbridged rivers. To such frauds there could be no certain check; for it took six months to get word in and out of Cariboo. Eastern papers were full of advertisements of

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

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

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 ov

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 le

The episode of Cariboo is so recent that the bibliography on it is not very complete. British Columbia , by Judge Howay and E. O. S. Scholefield, provincial librarian, is the last and most accurate word on the history of that province, though one could wish that the authors had given more human-document records in the biographical section. In a very few years there will be no old-timers of the trail left; and, after all, it is the human document that gives colour and life to history. It was my p

1. THE DAWN OF CANADIAN HISTORY By Stephen Leacock. 2. THE MARINER OF ST MALO By Stephen Leacock....

3. THE FOUNDER OF NEW FRANCE By Charles W. Colby. 4. THE JESUIT MISSIONS By Thomas Guthrie Marquis. 5. THE SEIGNEURS OF OLD CANADA By William Bennett Munro. 6. THE GREAT INTENDANT By Thomas Chapais. 7. THE FIGHTING GOVERNOR By Charles W. Colby....

8. THE GREAT FORTRESS By William Wood. 9. THE ACADIAN EXILES By Arthur G. Doughty. 10. THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE By William Wood. 11. THE WINNING OF CANADA By William Wood....

12. THE FATHER OF BRITISH CANADA By William Wood. 13. THE UNITED EMPIRE LOYALISTS By W. Stewart Wallace. 14. THE WAR WITH THE UNITED STATES By William Wood....

15. THE WAR CHIEF OF THE OTTAWAS By Thomas Guthrie Marquis. 16. THE WAR CHIEF OF THE SIX NATIONS By Louis Aubrey Wood. 17. TECUMSEH: THE LAST GREAT LEADER OF HIS PEOPLE By Ethel T. Raymond....

18. THE 'ADVENTURERS OF ENGLAND' ON HUDSON BAY By Agnes C. Laut. 19. PATHFINDERS OF THE GREAT PLAINS By Lawrence J. Burpee. 20. ADVENTURERS OF THE FAR NORTH By Stephen Leacock. 21. THE RED RIVER COLONY By Louis Aubrey Wood. 22. PIONEERS OF THE PACIFIC COAST By Agnes C. Laut. 23. THE CARIBOO TRAIL By Agnes C. Laut....

24. THE FAMILY COMPACT By W. Stewart Wallace. 25. THE 'PATRIOTES' OF '37 By Alfred D. DeCelles. 26. THE TRIBUNE OF NOVA SCOTIA By William Lawson Grant. 27. THE WINNING OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT By Archibald MacMechan....

28. THE FATHERS OF CONFEDERATION By A. H. U. Colquhoun. 29. THE DAY OF SIR JOHN MACDONALD By Sir Joseph Pope. 30. THE DAY OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER By Oscar D. Skelton....

31. ALL AFLOAT By William Wood. 32. THE RAILWAY BUILDERS By Oscar D. Skelton....