The Cariboo Trail / A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia

by Agnes C. Laut

CHAPTER VI

QUESNEL AND KAMLOOPS

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 mists lifted at daybreak, the travellers observed that the river was narrowing again and that the wooded banks had begun to fly past very swiftly. There was no mistaking the signs. They were approaching more rapids. But the trick of guiding the craft down rapids had now been learned; so the flotilla rode the furious waters unharmed for fifteen miles.

It was almost dark when canoes and rafts swung round a curve in the river and saw a flag waving above the little walled fur-post of Fort George. The tired wanderers were welcomed in by clerks too amazed to speak, while a howling chorus of husky-dogs set up their serenade. A young Englishman, who had joined the Overlanders at St Paul, died from the effects of exposure a few minutes after being carried into the fort. Next morning the body was rolled in blankets, placed in a canoe, and buried under a rude wooden cross, with stones piled above the grave to prevent the ravaging of huskies and wolves.

The chief factor was away, but the young clerks in charge sent Indians along to pilot the Overlanders through the rapids below Fort George, known as the most dangerous on the Fraser. These rapids, it will be recalled, had wrecked Alexander Mackenzie and had almost cost Simon Fraser his life. But the treasure-seekers did not have to go as far south as Alexandria, where Mackenzie had turned back. With guides who knew the waters, they ran the rapids below Fort George safely, and moored at Quesnel, the entrance to Cariboo, on the 11th of September—four months after they had left Canada.