Governor Douglas to the Right Hon. Henry Labouchere, M.P.
Victoria, Vancouver’s Island, May 8, 1858.
Since I had the honour of addressing you on the 6th of April last on the subject of the “Couteau” gold mines, they have become more than ever a source of attraction to the people of Washington and Oregon territories, and it is evident from the accounts published in the latest San Francisco papers, that intense excitement prevails among the inhabitants of that stirring city on the same subject.
The “Couteau” country is there represented and supposed to be in point of mineral wealth a second California or Australia, and those impressions are sustained by the false and exaggerated statements of steamboat owners and other interested parties, who benefit by the current of emigration which is now setting strongly towards this quarter.
Boats, canoes, and every species of small craft, are continually employed in pouring their cargoes of human beings into Fraser River, and it is supposed that not less than one thousand whites are already at work and on the way to the gold districts. Many accidents have happened in the dangerous rapids of that river; a great number of canoes have been dashed to pieces, and their cargoes swept away by the impetuous stream, while of the ill-fated adventurers who accompanied them many have been swept into eternity.
The others, nothing daunted by the spectacle of ruin and buoyed up by the hope of amassing wealth, still keep pressing onward towards the coveted goal of their most ardent wishes.
On the 25th of last month, the American steamer “Commodore” arrived in this port direct from San Francisco, with 450 passengers on board, the chief part of whom are gold miners for the “Couteau” country.
Nearly 400 of those men were landed at this place, and have since left in boats and canoes for Fraser River.
I ascertained from inquiries on the subject that those men are all well provided with mining tools, and that there was no dearth of capital or intelligence among them. About sixty British subjects, with an equal number of native born Americans, the rest being chiefly Germans, with a smaller proportion of Frenchmen and Italians, composed this body of adventurers.
They are represented as being, with some exceptions, a specimen of the worst of the population of San Francisco; the very dregs, in fact, of society. Their conduct while here would have led me to form a very different conclusion; as our little town, though crowded to excess with this sudden influx of people, and though there was a temporary scarcity of food, and dearth of house accommodation, the police few in number, and many temptations to excess in the way of drink, yet quiet and order prevailed, and there was not a single committal for rioting, drunkenness, or other offences during their stay here.