3. That he also binds himself to receive no passengers, except the said passengers do produce a gold mining licence and permit from the Government at Vancouver’s Island.
4. That the said owner also binds himself not to trade with Indians.
Advantages possessed by British Columbia over Australia as a Field for Emigration.
From the Times’ Correspondent.
From Australia, too, the emigration will be large. In that country the cream has already been skimmed off the “placers.” The efflorescence of gold near the surface has been dug out, hence the results of individual exertions are becoming less promising; and the miner is a restless, excitable creature, whose love of freedom and independence indisposes him to associate himself in enterprises requiring an aggregation of capital and labour. He prefers to work “on his own hook,” or with one or two “chums” at most. This is the feeling in this country. There is another cause which will bring vast numbers of miners from Australia, and that is the great scarcity of water—a desideratum of the first importance. This first necessary for mining, operations exists in abundance at all seasons in the new El Dorado, and this fact alone will attract additional miners to it from every mining country and locality in which water is scarce. Another great objection to Australia is the impossibility of acquiring land in fee in small parcels at or near to the mines. Many men take to mining as a means of making sufficient money to buy farming implements and stock with. As soon as this object is accomplished, they abandon mining for farming. Did not California afford the means of gratifying this wish, thousands of our miners would have left the country. As it is, with abundance of good land to be had cheap, I have found that a large proportion of the farms in the interior of this country are owned by farmers who bought them with the produce of their labour in the mines. The same advantages can be obtained in the new gold country, there being plenty of good land in the British territory in the neighbourhood and on Vancouver’s Island. It is to be hoped the Government will make the price reasonable.
Prices of Provisions, etcetera, at the Gold Fields.
The following tariff of charges, collected by the Times’ correspondent, is now only valuable in a historical point of view, as, under the healthy competition of the Californian merchants, prices have already found their own level:—
“Canoes are very scarce; the price has risen from 50 dollars and 80 dollars to 100 dollars each. Many parties have built light boats for themselves, but they did not answer.”
“We have got up, but we had a hard time coming.”
“Jordan is a hard road to travel; lost all our outfit, except flour. Our canoe was capsized in the falls, and was broken to pieces. Six other canoes capsized and smashed the same day near the same place. Poor whites and two Indians belonging to these six canoes drowned.”