Old And New Days In British Columbia

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Title:     Old And New Days In British Columbia
Author: Morley Roberts [More Titles by Roberts]

The whole of this vast country--this sea of mountains, as it has very appropriately been called--used practically to belong to the Hudson's Bay Trading Company, and they made more than enough money out of it and its inhabitants. The Indians, though never quite to be trusted, were, and are, not so warlike as their neighbours far to the south of the forty-ninth parallel, such as the Sioux and Apaches, and naturally were so innocent of the value of the furs and skins they brought into the trading ports and forts as to be vilely cheated, in accordance with all the best traditions of white men dealing with ignorant and commercially unsophisticated savages. Guns and rifles being the objects most desired by the Indian, he was made to pay for them, and to pay an almost incredible price, as it seems to us now, for the company made sure of three or four hundred per cent, at the very least, and occasionally more; so that a ten shilling Birmingham musket brought in several pounds when the pelts for which it was exchanged were sold in the London market.

Their dominion of exclusion passed away with the discovery of gold in Cariboo, and the consequent assumption of direct rule by the Government. The palmy days of mining are looked back on with great regret by the old miners, and many are the stories I have heard by the camp fire or the hotel bar, which explained how it was that the narrator was still poor, and how So-and-so became rich. There were few men who were successful in keeping what they had made by luck or hard work, yet gold dust flew round freely, and provisions were at famine prices. I knew one man who said he had paid forty-two dollars (or nearly nine pounds) for six pills. They were dear but necessary; and as the man who possessed them had a corner in drugs, he was able to name his price. At that time, too, some men made large sums of money by mere physical labour, and for packing food on their backs to the mines they received a dollar for every pound weight they brought in.

An acquaintance of mine, who is now an hotel-keeper at Kamloops, was a living example of the strange freaks fortune played men in Cariboo. He was offered a share in a mine for nothing, but refused it, and bought into another. Gold was taken out of the first one to the tune of 50,000 dollars, and the other took all the money invested in it and never returned a cent. He was in despair about one mine, and tried to sell out in vain. He was thinking of giving up his share for nothing, when gold was found in quantities. I think he makes more out of whisky, however, than he ever did at Cariboo, though he still hankers after the old exciting times and the prospects of the gold-miner's toast, "Here's a dollar to the pan, the bed-rock pitching, and the gravel turning blue."

Nowadays there are still plenty of men who traverse the country in all directions looking for new finds. They are called "prospectors," and go about with a pony packed with a pick, a shovel, and a few necessaries, hunting chiefly for quartz veins, and they talk of nothing but "quartz," "bed-rock," "leads," gold and silver, and so many ounces to the ton. It is now many years ago since I was working on a small cattle ranch in the Kamloops district, when one of these men, a tall, grey-haired old fellow named Patterson, came by. My employer knew him, and asked him to stay. He bored us to death the whole evening, and showed innumerable specimens, which truly were not very promising, as it seemed to us. His great contempt for farming was very characteristic of the species. "What's a few head of rowdy steers?" asked Mr Patterson; "why, any day I might strike ten thousand dollars." "Yes," I answered mischievously; "and any day you mightn't." He turned and glared at me, demanding what I knew about mining. "Not a great deal," said I; "but I have seen mining here and in Australia, and for one that makes anything a hundred die dead broke." "Well," he replied, scornfully "I'd rather die that way than go ploughing, and I tell you I know where there is money to be made. Just wait till I can get hold of a capitalist."

That is another of the poor prospector's stock cries; but as a general rule capitalists are wary, and don't invest in such "wild cat" speculations.

Next morning Mr Patterson proposed that I should go along with him and he would make my fortune. "What at?" said I. "Quartz mining?" "Not this time," was his answer; "it's placer" (alluvial). I was not in the least particular then what I did if I could only get good wages, so I wanted to know what he proposed giving me. "Bed-rock wages," said he. Now that means good money if a strike is made, and nothing if it is not. So I shook my head, and he turned away, leaving me to wallow in the mire of contemptible security. I can hardly doubt that he will be one day found dead in the mountains, and that his Eldorado will be but oblivion.

Just as I was about to leave British Columbia for Washington Territory there were very good reports of the new Similkameen diggings, and for the first and only time in my life I was very nearly taking the gold fever. But though I saw much of the gold that had been taken out of the creek, I managed to restrain myself, and was glad of it afterwards, when I learned from a friend of mine in town that very few had made anything out of it, and that most had returned to New Westminster penniless and in rags.

Railroads and modern progress are nowadays civilising the country to a great extent, though I am by no means sure that civilisation is a good thing in itself. However, manners are much better than they used to be in the old times, and it might be hard now to find an instance of ignorance parallel to one which my friend Mr H. told me. It appears that a dinner was to be given in the earlier days to some great official from England, and an English lady, who knew how such things should be done, was appointed manager. She determined that everything should be in good style, and ordered even such extravagant and unknown luxuries as napkins and finger-glasses. Among those who sat at the well-appointed table were miners, cattle-men, and so on, and one of them on sitting down took up his finger-bowl, and saying, "By golly, I'm thirsty," emptied it at a draught. Then, to add horror on horror, he trumpeted loudly in his napkin and put it in his breast pocket.

The progress of civilisation, however, destroys the Indians and their virtues. One Indian woman, who was married to a friend of mine--and a remarkably intelligent woman she was--one day remarked to me that before white men came into the country the women of her tribe (she was a Ptsean) were good and modest but that now that was all gone. It is true enough. This same woman was remarkable among the general run of her class, and spoke very good English, being capable of making a joke too. A half-bred Indian, working for her husband, one day spoke contemptuously of his mother's tribe, and Mrs ----, being a full-blooded Indian, did not like it. She asked him if he was an American, and, after overwhelming him with sarcasm, turned him out of doors.

As a matter of fact, most of the Indians are demoralised, especially those who live in or near the towns, and they live in a state of degradation and perpetual debauchery. Though it is a legal offence to supply them with liquor, they nevertheless manage to get drunk at all times and seasons. When they work they are not to be relied on to continue at it steadily, and when drunk they are only too often dangerous. Their type of face is often very low, and I never saw but one handsome man among the half-breeds, though the women, especially the Hydahs, are passable in looks. This man was a pilot, and a good one, on the lakes; but he was perpetually being discharged for drunkenness.

The lake and river steamboats are not always safe to be in, and some of the pilotage and engineering is reckless in the extreme. The captains are too often given to drink overmuch, and when an intoxicated man is at the wheel in a river full of the natural dangers of bars and snags, and those incident on a tremendous current, the situation often becomes exciting. I was once on the Fraser River in a steamer whose boiler was certified to bear 80 lb. of steam and no more. We were coming to a "riffle," or rapid, where the stream ran very fiercely, with great swirls and waves in it, and the captain sang out to the engineer, "How much steam have you, Jack?" "Eighty," answered Jack.

"Fire up, fire up!" said the captain, as he jammed the tiller over; "we shall never make the riffle on that."

The firemen went to work, and threw in more wood, and presently we approached the rapid. The captain leant out of the pilot house.

"Give it her, Jack," he yelled excitedly.

The answer given by Jack scared me, for I knew quite well what she ought to bear.

"There's a hundred and twenty on her now!"

"Well, maybe it will do;" and the captain's head retreated.

On we went, slowly crawling and fighting against the swift stream which tore by us. We got about half-way up, and we gradually stayed in one position, and even went back a trifle. The captain yelled and shouted for more steam yet, and then I retreated as far as I could, and sat on the taffrail, to be as far as possible from the boiler, which I believed would explode every moment. But Jack obeyed orders, and rammed and raked at the fires until the gauge showed 160 lb., and we got over at last. But I confess I did feel nervous.

This happened about ten miles below Yale, and at that very spot the tiller-ropes of the same boat once parted, and they had to let her drift. Fortunately, she hung for a few moments in an eddy behind a big rock until they spliced them again; but it was a close call with everyone on board. A steamer once blew up there, and most of the crew and passengers were killed outright or drowned.

Above Yale the river is not navigable until Savona's Ferry is reached. That is on the Kamloops Lake, and thence east up the Thompson and the lakes there is navigation to Spallamacheen. Once the owners of the _Peerless_ ran her from Savona down to Cook's Ferry, just in order to see if it could be done. The down-stream trip was done in three hours, but it took three weeks to get her back again, and then her progress had to be aided with ropes from the shore; so it was not deemed advisable to make the trip regularly.

As for the river in the main Fraser canyon, it is nothing more nor less than a perfect hell of waters; and though Mr Onderdonk, who had the lower British Columbia contract for the Canadian Pacific Railroad, built a boat to run on it, the first time the _Skuzzy_ let go of the bank she ran ashore. She was taken to pieces and rebuilt on the lakes. The railroad people wanted her at first on the lower river, and asked a Mr Moore, who is well known as a daring steamboatman, to take her down. He said he would undertake it, but demanded so high a fee, including a thousand dollars for his wife if he was drowned, that his offer was refused. Yet it was well worth almost any money, for it would have been a very hazardous undertaking--as bad as, or even worse than, the _Maid of the Mist_ going through the rapids below Niagara.

[The end]
Morley Roberts's essay: Old And New Days In British Columbia

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