To the north was that most beautiful and natural park, Beacon Hill. Victoria, we were told, nestled just behind it, though not much of the town could be seen from where our ship lay.
About noon of the same day, April 11th, we were landed by a small boat on the rocks near where the outer wharf has since been built.
First Impressions.
The natural beauty of its situation entitled Victoria, then as now, to the name of Queen City of the Pacific Coast.
The town was not large, but the first Parliament buildings and several good-sized churches gave it importance and helped to enhance the effect of its appearance. The place was crowded with men, the chief stir of business being where the “Cheap Johns” had stores for outfitting the miners—you could hear one on each side of the street auctioneering their goods almost night and day. The Hudson’s Bay Company’s store and wharf, with their little boats, the Enterprise and Otter, were rushing business to the port of Queensborough (now New Westminster), on the Fraser River, where the goods were transferred to river steamers and rushed on up to the diggings.
Besides those who took passage on the steamers, hundreds were venturing in small boats and canoes, many of which were wrecked or lost on the Gulf of Georgia and the treacherous river. And some of those who escaped shipwreck were murdered by the savages before they reached the mines.
New Westminster was then a growing village, situated on Mary Hill, which was still partly covered with immense timber. To the east, looking up the Fraser River, nature presented another grand panorama of glorious mountains, upon whose lofty peaks the snow lay all the year round.
From here the stern-wheel steamers carried freight and passengers to Yale, then the terminus of steamboat navigation, nearly one hundred miles up the Fraser. Thence the miner carried his goods on his back, or had them carried on the backs of pack animals or in ox-waggons, nearly four hundred miles farther. About this time the great waggon road was completed to Cariboo, and the treacherous trails over “Jackass” (a difficult ascent behind Yale) and other mountains were abandoned.