Canoe Better than Steamboat.
Just as we entered the Fraser River we were surprised to see the little steamer Enterprise coming down, and as we passed her the chairman, Dr. Evans, and his colleague, Rev. Arthur Browning, bowed to us. District Meeting was over, and they were going home to Victoria!
Next morning, when we were down at the wharf at Westminster, there came in the Hudson’s Bay Company’s steamer Labouchere, and the Union Pacific Navigation Company’s steamer, Shoebrick—the latter carrying supplies for the overland telegraph line, which was to unite the continents by way of Alaska, which enterprise was broken up by the successful laying of the Atlantic cable. The men on the wharf wanted to know from the captains of the ships why they had not come yesterday.
“Oh!” they said, “it was blowing a terrific gale on the Gulf, and we couldn’t cross.”
“Ha, ha, ha!” taunted the bystanders, “Parson White and his crew crossed in a canoe, and you couldn’t come over with your large steamships.” But they little knew what a trip we had had.
And now our old Dutch sailor had to have his say. He went boasting about the town that he had had his eye on Parson White’s gold watch—a present to him as he left New Westminster some time before—and that if we had upset he was going for that. Poor, miserable fellow, he was the greatest coward in the crowd.
This was one of the many terrible canoe trips we had to take while at our work, when to all human appearances there was every possibility that we would never reach shore. Once after I made the journey in the opposite direction in a small canoe, with a single Indian as my companion, and again we were nearly swamped before reaching the shore.
To-day, as always, I sympathize with the hundreds of fishermen who go out to the mouth of the river and venture into the Gulf, braving the awful storms which so often sweep down across this treacherous arm of the sea. Nearly every year reports have reached us of those who have risked their lives, and of some who have lost them, on this part of the coast.