Douglas had been up as far as Yale in June, but was now back in Victoria, where couriers brought him word of the open fight in August. He promptly organized a force of Royal Engineers and marines and set out for the scene of the disorders. Royal Engineers to the number of a hundred and fifty-six and their families had come out from England for the boundary survey; and their presence must have seemed providential to Douglas, now that the miners were forming vigilance committees of their own and the Indians were on the war-path. He went up the river in a small cruiser and reached Hope on the 1st of September. Salutes were fired as he landed. Douglas knew how to use all the pomp of regimentals and formality to impress the Indians. He opened a solemn powwow with the chiefs of the Fraser. As usual, the white man's fire-water was found to be the chief cause of the trouble. Without waiting for legislative authority, Douglas issued a royal proclamation against the sale of liquor and left a mining recorder to register claims. He also appointed a justice of the peace. Then he went on to Yale. At Yale he considered the price of provisions too high, and by arbitrarily reducing the price at the company's stores, he broke the ring of the petty dealers. This won him the friendship of the miners. Within a week he had allayed all irritation between white man and Indian. In a quarrel over a claim a white man had been murdered on one of the bars. Douglas appointed magistrates to try the case. The trial was of course illegal, for colonial government had not been formally inaugurated in New Caledonia or British Columbia, as it was soon to be known, and Douglas's authority as governor did not extend beyond Vancouver Island. But so, for that matter, were illegal all his actions on this journey; yet by an odd inconsistency of fact against law, they restored peace and order on the river.
A group of Thompson River Indians. From a photograph by Maynard.
It was not long, however, before the formal organization of the new colony took place. Hardly had Douglas returned to Victoria when ships from England arrived bringing his commission as governor of British Columbia. Arrived, also, Matthew Baillie Begbie, 'a Judge in our Colony of British Columbia,' and a detachment of Royal Engineers under command of Colonel Moody. At Fort Langley, on November 19, 1858, the colony of British Columbia was proclaimed under the laws of England.
Then, in January, just as Douglas and the officers of his government had again settled down comfortably at Victoria, came word of more riots at Yale, led by a notorious desperado and deposed judge of California named Ned M'Gowan. The possibility of American occupation had become an obsession at Victoria. There were undoubtedly those among the American miners who made wild boasts. Douglas gathered up all his panoply of war and law. Along went Colonel Moody, with a company of his Royal Engineers, Lieutenant Mayne of the Imperial Navy with a hundred bluejackets, and Judge Matthew Begbie, to deal out justice to the offenders. Douglas remembered the cry 'fifty-four forty or fight,' and he remembered what had happened to his chief, M'Loughlin, in Oregon when the American settlers there had set up vigilance committees. He would take no chances. The party carried along a small cannon. Lieutenant Mayne could not take his cruiser the Plumper higher than Langley; and there the forces were transferred to Tom Wright's stern-wheeler, the Enterprise. But, when they arrived at Hope, the whole affair looked like semi-comic vaudeville. Yale, too, was as quiet as a church prayer-meeting; and Colonel Moody preached a sermon on Sunday to a congregation of forty in the court-house—the first church service ever held on the mainland of British Columbia.
