BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
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 privilege to know some of the Overlanders intimately. One of the companies who rafted down the Fraser came from the county where I was born; and though they preceded my day, their terrible experiences were a household word. With others I have poled the Fraser on those very tempestuous waters that took such toll of life in '62. Others have been my hosts. I have gone up and down the Arrow Lakes in a steamer as a guest of the man who came through the worst experiences of the Overlanders. Chance conversations are shifty guides on dates and place-names. For these, regarding the Overlanders, I have relied on Mrs MacNaughton's Cariboo.
Gosnell's British Columbia Year Book and Hubert Howe Bancroft's British Columbia are very full on this era. Walter Moberly's pamphlets on the building of the trail and Mr Alexander's casual addresses are excellent. Old files of the Kamloops Sentinel and the Victoria Colonist are full of scattered data. Anderson's Hand Book of 1858, Begbie's Report to the London Geographical Society, 1861; Begg's British Columbia; Fraser's Journal; Mayne's British Columbia, 1862; Milton and Cheadle's North West Passage, 1865; Palliser's Report, 1859; Waddington's Fraser River Mines—all afford sidelights on this adventurous era. On the prospector's daily life there is no book. That must be learned from him on the trail; and on many camp trips in the Rockies, with prospectors for guides, I have picked up such facts as I could.