“Now then; roll away or crawl away to your right, as far as you can, and as sharp as you can; and jump up when I open fire,” whispered the old soldier, and Weld could see that, at a wave of his friend’s arm, all the Englishmen were swiftly separating. He 263 obeyed; but by the time he had covered a dozen yards, he became convinced that the Indians had all gone suddenly demented, for from every direction there arose a succession of demoniacal yells that almost drowned the crack-crack of the rifles that now sounded on his left.
He leapt to his feet; not an Indian was in sight. The white men, all standing up, were blazing away as hard as they could, into an immense herd of bucks, which were falling in numbers out of all reasonable proportion to the shots fired. Then he discovered that, from the other three sides, the Ojibewas, lying in the long grass or crouching behind trees, were pouring volley after volley of arrows at the bewildered beasts, which, butting each other, were starting hither and thither, completely panic-stricken.
“’Ware horns!” shouted the Major’s son as, hurriedly butting his rifle, he felled an antelope that had charged despairingly at him; and very soon Weld was glad enough to follow the example, as a stout young buck rushed, head down, in his direction.
More terrified now by the noise of the guns and the sight of the white men than by the arrows and shouts that proceeded from the other three points of the compass, the herd turned to flee back towards the hills. But this was only the signal for every Indian to spring erect and brandish his long spear. That effectually broke up the herd; the distracted creatures squeezed a passage for themselves wherever they could, and fled out of sight, leaving a good half of their number to be carried back to the farm in the waggons which were now on their way to the scene of the battue.
CHAPTER XXI
CHIPPEWYANS AND COLUMBIAN GOLD-DIGGERS
While human nature is what it is, the sudden discovery of gold in any country must ever be the signal for all the available flotsam and jetsam and riff-raff of society to flock to that country, in the sorry hope of finding a shorter road to wealth than the old-fashioned one of steady plodding.
Before mining concerns were regulated by governments or by syndicates, the edifying spectacle of men wrangling and fighting over a claim or a “find,” like dogs over a bone, might be witnessed at any hour of the day. Add to this the constant disturbance between the strangers and the original inhabitants, and you have a condition of affairs which must quickly call for some intervention by the State. This is what our Government thought when, in 1857, the discovery of gold in British Columbia began to lead to rioting among the miners and to petty insurrections of the Indians of the vicinity. In order to nip such disorders in the bud, a few troops were landed near what is now called New Westminster, on the Fraser River, and a man-of-war, H.M.S. Plumper, commanded by Captain Richards, was ordered to keep a watchful eye 265 on the river mouth. Rumour said that the ship had been sent to hold the Indians in check; but Admiral Mayne, who was then first lieutenant of the Plumper, tells us that it was the white immigrants who required handling, and that, but for them, the Columbian Indians, who had long been quiet and inoffensive, would have confined their attentions to their fishing and farming.