Sir James Douglas. From a portrait by Savannah
Judge Howay gives the letter of a treasure-seeker who reached the Fraser in April, the substance of which is as follows:
We're now located thirty miles above the junction of the Fraser and the Thompson on Fraser River... About a fourth of the canoes that attempt to come up are lost in the rapids which extend from Fort Yale nearly to the Forks. A few days ago six men were drowned by their canoe upsetting. There is more danger going down than coming up. There can be no doubt about this country being immensely rich in gold. Almost every bar on the river from Yale up will pay from three dollars to seven dollars a day to the man at the present stage of water. When the river gets low, which will be about August, the bars will pay very well. One hundred and ninety-six dollars was taken out by one man last winter in a few hours, but the water was then at its lowest stage. The gold on the bars is all very fine and hard to save in a rocker, but with quicksilver properly managed, good wages can be made almost anywhere on the river as long as the bars are actually covered with water. We have not yet been able to find a place where we can work anything but rockers. If we could get a sluice to work, we could make from twelve dollars to sixteen dollars a day each. We only commenced work yesterday and we are satisfied that when we get fully under way we can make from five dollars to seven dollars a day each. The prospect is better as we go up the river on the bars. The gold is not any coarser, but there is more of it. There are also in that region diggings of coarser gold on small streams that empty into the main river. A few men have been there and proved the existence of rich diggings by bringing specimens back with them. The Indians all along the river have gold in their possession that they say they dug themselves, but they will not tell where they get it, nor allow small parties to go up after it. I have seen pieces in their possession weighing two pounds. The Indians above are disposed to be troublesome and went into a camp twenty miles above us and forcibly took provisions and arms from a party of four men and cut two severely with their knives. They came to our camp the same day and insisted that we should trade with them or leave the country. We design to remain here until we can get a hundred men together, when we will move up above the falls and do just what we please without regard to the Indians. We are at present the highest up of any white men on the river, and we must go higher to be satisfied. I don't apprehend any danger from the Indians at present, but there will be hell to pay after a while. There is a pack-trail from Hope, but it cannot be travelled till the snow is off the mountains.
The prices of provisions are as follows: flour thirty-five dollars per hundred-weight, pork a dollar a pound, beans fifty cents a pound, and other things in proportion. Every party that starts from the Sound should have their own supplies to last them three or four months, and they should bring the largest size chinook canoes, as small ones are very liable to swamp in the rapids. Each canoe should be provided with thirty fathoms of strong line for towing over swift water, and every man well armed. The Indians here can beat anything alive stealing. They will soon be able to steal a man's food after he has eaten it.
Indians near New Westminster, B.C. From a photograph by Maynard.
Within two miles of Yale eighty Indians and thirty white men were working the gold-bars; and log boarding-houses and saloons sprang up along the river-bank as if by magic. Naturally, the last comers of '58 were too late to get a place on the gold-bars, and they went back to the coast in disgust, calling the gold stampede 'the Fraser River humbug.' Nevertheless, men were washing, sluicing, rocking, and digging gold as far as Lillooet. Often the day's yield ran as high as eight hundred dollars a man; and the higher up the treasure-seekers pushed their way, the coarser grew the gold flakes and grains. Would the golden lure lead finally to the mother lode of all the yellow washings? That is the hope that draws the prospector from river to stream, from stream to dry gully bed, from dry gully to precipice edge, and often over the edge to death or fortune.
Exactly fifty-six years from the first rush of '58 in the month of April, I sat on the banks of the Fraser at Yale and punted across the rapids in a flat-bottomed boat and swirled in and out among the eddies of the famous bars. A Siwash family lived there by fishing with clumsy wicker baskets. Higher up could be seen some Chinamen, but whether they were fishing or washing we could not tell. Two transcontinental railroads skirted the canyon, one on each side, and the tents of a thousand construction workers stood where once were the camps of the gold-seekers banded together for protection. When we came back across the river an old, old man met us and sat talking to us on the bank. He had come to the Fraser in that first rush of '58. He had been one of the leaders against the murderous bands of Indians. Then, he had pushed on up the river to Cariboo, travelling, as he told us, by the Indian trails over 'Jacob's ladders'—wicker and pole swings to serve as bridges across chasms—wherever the 'float' or sign of mineral might lead him. Both on the Fraser and in Cariboo he had found his share of luck and ill luck; and he plainly regretted the passing of that golden age of danger and adventure. 'But,' he said, pointing his trembling old hands at the two railways, 'if we prospectors hadn't blazed the trail of the canyon, you wouldn't have your railroads here to-day. They only followed the trail we first cut and then built. We followed the "float" up and they followed us.'