Numbers of Shushwaps frequented Kamloops, and their love of finery made them very conspicuous amongst the roughly-dressed miners. The men delighted in scarlet leggings, red sashes, and bright-coloured ribbons in their caps; the women affected the gaudiest skirts, and the most vivid-coloured handkerchiefs on their heads. They are beginning to appreciate the advantages of agriculture, and grow potatoes with great success; are keen traders, thoroughly acquainted with the value of money, and by their labour alone as packmen, the miners were supplied with necessaries for a long time, until a mule trail was cut open. But although of superior industry to the Indians of the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains, they compare very disadvantageously with them in physique and intelligence, and presented many points of difference from their relations we met at The Cache. They are of smaller stature and less powerful build than the former; their faces are broader and rounder; the cheek-bones higher; the nose smaller, less prominent, and the nostrils more dilated. Their complexion is darker, and of a more muddy, coppery hue than that of the true Red Indian, and their general appearance so strange to our eyes when we first encountered a party of them on our way down the North Thompson, that we never suspected they were Indians, but took them for Mexicans, or some immigrants from the east.[18] They are also talkative and mercurial, and exhibit none of the dignity and conscious power which marks the Red Indian of the plains.

The tradition of the origin of their tribes, existing amongst some of the Indians of British Columbia, appears to be a curious confusion of the Bible histories taught them by the Romish priests, who have been established amongst them for upwards of a century. For the following version we are indebted to Mr. Greville Mathew, registrar of the colony:—A race of men existed upon the earth at the time when a great flood came. It rained day and night week after week. The waters rose rapidly, so that all were drowned except one man. He made haste to reach higher ground, and ascended a lofty hill. Still it rained ceaselessly, the waters covered the face of the land, and followed this last Indian relentlessly as he retreated higher and higher up the mountain side. At length he gained the very summit, and as he sat and watched, the pursuing floods continued to approach. In hopeless despair he prayed to the Great Spirit, who responded to his prayer by changing the lower half of his body into stone, so that, when the advancing waters surged up to him, he remained unmoved. They rose to his waist, and then the rains ceased and the floods began to subside. Although delighted with his unexpected escape, the solitary Indian was oppressed with dismay by the reflection that he was the only survivor, and in his distress again prayed to the Great Spirit to grant him a “Klootcheman,” or squaw. He then fell asleep, and after a time awaking, found his lower limbs restored to flesh and bone, and a beautiful “Klootcheman” by his side. From this pair sprang the Indian tribes in British Columbia. This is a striking instance of a fusion of the story of the creation with that of the deluge; originally derived, no doubt, from the early Romish missionaries, but by lapse of time having passed into a tradition of the tribes, and suggests a source of error affecting philology.

A fearful mortality has prevailed amongst them since the advent of the whites, 300 having died in the neighbourhood of Kamloops alone from small-pox the previous year. Their curious custom of leaving their dead unburied, laid out in the open air, with all their property around them, we observed on our journey to Kamloops, when, as the reader may remember, we discovered many victims to the ravages of the pestilence. Other diseases have been almost equally fatal, and before many years, the once numerous natives of this country, although apparently easily susceptible of a certain civilisation, will have diminished to a very small company.

On the 8th of September we left Kamloops with Mr. McKay, and accompanied by Mr. and Mrs. Assiniboine, the boy, and another Indian. We had determined to take our friends down to Victoria, for, although The Assiniboine had once visited the Red River Settlement, the woman and boy had never seen anything more like a town than a Hudson’s Bay Post. We crossed the Thompson at the foot of Kamloops Lake, which is about twelve miles long and not more than half a mile in breadth, and surrounded by fine rocky hills; then, leaving the river, we kept on to the valley of the Bonaparte, where we struck the road from Cariboo to Yale, as yet only partially completed. The Assiniboine and his wife were both greatly astonished at the Queen’s highway, but the boy became quite excited, exclaiming, whenever any person appeared in sight, “Aiwarkaken! mina quatuck!” (By Jove! there’s another fellow!) But when we encountered a real swell of the neighbourhood, driving a “buggy” and pair, he was delighted beyond expression. We now followed the valley of the Bonaparte until it joins that of the Thompson, viewing with wonder the curious terraces which strike the eye of a stranger so oddly, and give such a peculiar character to the scenery of the Thompson and the Fraser. We first observed them on the North Thompson, some thirty or forty miles above Kamloops, and they are invariably present all along the main river until its junction with the Fraser at Lytton. On the Fraser they stretch from a little north of Alexandria to the Cañons above Yale, a distance of above 300 miles. These terraces—or benches, as they are called in this district—are perfectly level, and of exactly the same height on each side of the river. They differ from the so-called “parallel roads” of Glenroy in their enormous extent, being vast plains as compared with the mere ledges of the Scottish terraces, and are also free from the erratic boulders which mark the latter. In most places there are three tiers, each tier corresponding with a similar one on the opposite side of the valley. The lowest of the three, where the valley expands, presents a perfectly flat surface of often many miles in extent, raised some forty or fifty feet above the level of the river bank, with a sloping front, resembling the face of a railway embankment. Higher still, the second tier is generally cut out of the mountain side, seldom more than a few acres in extent, and raised sixty or seventy feet above the lower one; while, marked at an inaccessible height along the face of the bluffs which run down to the river, and probably 400 or 500 feet above it, is the third tier. These “benches” are quite uniform, and of even surface, entirely free from the great boulders so numerous in the present bed of the river, being composed of shale, sand, and gravel, the detritus of the neighbouring mountains. They are clothed with bunch-grass and wild sage, while here and there a few scattered pines relieve the yellow bareness so characteristic of the district. Similar terraces were noticed by Dr. Hector on the Athabasca, Kootanie, and Columbia Rivers, and they have been also observed on some rivers in California and Mexico; but in none of these instances do they appear comparable in extent and regularity with those of the Thompson and Fraser. It is worthy of remark that in nearly every instance where these terraces have been found, in various countries, they occur in three successive tiers, as in these of British Columbia; which would seem to mark as many separate epochs when important geological disturbances took place.

[(Larger)]

THE TERRACES ON THE FRASER RIVER.

(See [page 338].)

Gold is found in all these benches on the Fraser in the state of the finest “flour gold,” but not in sufficient quantities to satisfy the miner when the richer diggings of Cariboo outrun all competition. There seems to be some unexplained connection between these terraces and the celebrated “bunch-grass,” for where the terraces commence on the north, the bunch-grass is also first found, and both end together above Yale. The rolling country between the two rivers is indeed clothed with this grass, but it does not extend beyond the northern limit of the terraces. In the valley of the Columbia, to the south-west, it grows with great luxuriance, and here again the curious terraces are found. The probable explanation of this circumstance is that the peculiar kind of soil formed by the disintegration of the limestone, or soft volcanic rocks, found in this district, is necessary to the growth of this peculiar grass.

Soon after we again reached the Thompson, we came to a place where a portion of the road was not yet made, and led our horses over high rocky bluffs, which at first sight appeared completely to bar all passage. The trail was a mere ledge of rock of a few inches in width, and conquered the precipitous ascent by a succession of windings and zig-zags. The path was so narrow that it was quite impossible for horses to pass one another, and as the river rushes hundreds of feet immediately below, and even a slip would be certainly fatal, it is necessary to ascertain that the road is clear before venturing over the dangerous precipices.