Fires had not yet cleared the giant hemlock forests, as they have to-day along the Cariboo Trail, and prospectors found their way through a chartless sea of windfall—hemlocks criss-crossed the height of a house with branches interlaced like wire. Cataracts fell over lofty ledges in wind-blown spray. Spanish moss, grey-green and feathery, hung from branch to branch of the huge Douglas firs. Sometimes the trail would lead for miles round the edge of some precipices beyond which could be glimpsed the eternal snows. Sometimes an avalanche slid over a slope with the distant appearance of a great white waterfall and the echo of muffled thunder. Where the mountain was swept as by a mighty besom, the pack-train kept an anxious eye on the snow amid the valleys of the upper peaks; for, in an instant, the snowslide might come over the edge of the upper valley to sweep down the slope, carrying away forests, rocks, trail, pack-train and all. The story is told of one slide seen by the guide at the head of a long pack-train. He had judged it to be ten miles away; but out from the upper valley it came coiling like a long white snake, and before he could turn, it had caught him. In a slide death was almost certain, from suffocation if not from the crush of falling trees and rocks. Miners have been taken from their cabins dead in the trail of a snowslide that swept the shack to the bottom of the valley without so much as a hair of their heads being injured. Though the logs were twisted and warped, the dead bodies were not even bruised.
When a hushed whisper came through the trees, travellers looked for some waterfall. At midday, when the thaw was at its full, all the mountain torrents became vocal with the glee of disimprisoned life running a race of gladness to the sea. The sun sets early in the mountains with a gradual hushing of the voice of glad waters and a red glow as of wine on the encircling peaks. Camp for the night was always near water for the horses; and every star was etched in replica in river or lake. Sunrise steals in silence among the mountain peaks. There is none of that stir of song and vague rustling of animal life such as are heard at lower levels. Nor does the light gradually rise above the eastern horizon. The walled peaks cut off the skyline in mid-heaven. The stars pale. Trees and crags are mirrored in the lake so clearly that one can barely tell which is real and which is reflection. Then the water-lines shorten and the rocks emerge from the belts and wisps of mist; and all the sunset colours of the night before repeat themselves across the changing scene. As you look, the clouds lift. The cook shouts 'breakfast!' And it is another day.
Such was the trail and the life of the prospector who beat his way by pack-train and canoe up the canyons of the Fraser to learn whence came the wash of gold flake and nugget which he found in the sand-bars below.
CHAPTER III
CARIBOO
Indian unrest was probably first among the causes which led the miners to organize themselves into leagues for protection. The Indians of the Fraser were no more friendly to newcomers now than they had been in the days of Alexander Mackenzie and Simon Fraser.[[1]] They now professed great alarm for their fishing-grounds. Men on the gold-bars were jostled and hustled, and pegs marking limits were pulled up. A danger lay in the rows of saloons along the water-front—the well-known danger of liquor to the Indian. So the miners at Yale formed a vigilance committee and established self-made laws. The saloons should be abolished, they decreed. Sale of liquor to any person whomsoever was forbidden. All liquor, wherever found, was ordered spilled. Any one selling liquor to an Indian should be seized and whipped thirty-nine lashes on the bare back. A standing committee of twelve was appointed to enforce the law till the regular government should be organized.
It was July '58 when the miners on the river-bars formed their committee. And they formed it none too soon, for the Indians were on the war-path in Washington and the unrest had spread to New Caledonia. Young M'Loughlin, son of the famous John M'Loughlin of Oregon, coming up the Columbia overland from Okanagan to Kamloops with a hundred and sixty men, four hundred pack-horses and a drove of oxen, had three men sniped off by Indians in ambush and many cattle stolen. At Big Canyon on the Fraser two Frenchmen were found murdered. When word came of this murder the vigilance committee of Yale formed a rifle company of forty, which in August started up to the forks at Lytton. At Spuzzum there was a fight. Indians barred the way; but they were routed and seven of them killed in a running fire, and Indian villages along the river were burned. Meanwhile a hundred and sixty volunteers at Yale formed a company to go up the river under Captain Snyder. The company's trader at Yale was reluctant to supply arms, for the company's policy had ever been to conciliate the Indians. But, when a rabble of two thousand angry miners gathered round the store, the rifles were handed over on condition that forty of the worst fire-eaters in the band should remain behind. Snyder then led his men up the river and joined the first company at Spuzzum. At China Bar five miners were found hiding in a hole in the bank. With a number of companions they had been driven down-stream from the Thompson by Indians and had been sniped all the way for forty miles. Man after man had fallen, and the five survivors in the bank were all wounded.
When the Indians saw the company of armed men under Snyder, they fled to the hills. Flags of truce were displayed on both sides and a peace was patched up till Governor Douglas could come up from the coast. Not, however, before there occurred an unfortunate incident. At Long Bar, when an Indian chief came with a flag of truce, two of the white men snatched it from him and trampled it in the mud. On the instant the Indians shot both the white men where they stood.