IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 1.0 I.I 1.25 US. ma ... 1^ 1.8 1.4 I 1.6 '^r ^> Photographic Sciences Corporation 23 WIST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. 14580 (71«) 872-4503 \ CIHM/ICMH Microfiche Series. CIHM/ICMH Collection de microfiches. Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions / Institut Canadian de microreproductions historiques Technical and Bibliographic Notaa/Notaa tachniquaa at bibiiographiquaa Tha Inatltuta haa attamptad to obtain the baat original copy availabia for filming. Faaturaa of thia copy which may ba bibliographically uniqua, which may altar any of tha imagaa in tha raproduction, or which may aigniflcantly changa tha uaual mathod of filming, ara chaclcad baiow. D Colourad covara/ Couvartura da couiaur I I Covara damagad/ D Couvartura andommagAa Covara raatorad and/or iaminatad/ Couvartura rastaurAa at/ou pailiculAa □ Covar titia mitaing/ La D D D D titra da couvartura manqua lourad maps/ Cartaa gAographiquaa an couiaur I I Colourad maps/ □ Colourad inic (i.a. othar than blue or black)/ Encra da couiaur (i.a. autra qua blaua ou noica) I I Colourad plataa and/or illuatrationa/ Planchaa at/ou illuatrationa an couiaur Bound with othar matarial/ RaiiA avac d'autraa documanta Tight binding may cauaa ahadowa or diatortion along intarior margin/ La raliura aarrAa paut cauaar da I'ombra ou da la diatortion la long da la marga intAriaura Blank laavaa addad during raatoration may appaar within tha taxt. Whanavar poaaibia, thaaa hava baan omittad from filming/ II aa paut qua cartainaa pagaa blanchaa aJoutAaa lora d'una raatauration apparaiaaant dana la taxta, maia, ioraqua cala Atait poaaibia, caa pagaa n'ont paa At* film^aa. Additional commanta:/ Commantairaa aupplAmantairaa: L'Inatitut a microfilm* la maillaur axamplaira qu'il lui a At* poaaibia da aa procurer. Laa dAtaila da cat axamplaira qui aont paut-Atra uniquaa du point da vua bibliographiqua, qui pauvant modifier una in^age reproduite, ou qui peuvent exiger une modification dana ia mAthode norrnale de fiimaga aont indiquAa ci-daaaoua. □ Coloured pagaa/ Pagaa de couleur D D D D D D D Pagaa damaged/ Pagaa endommagAea Pagaa reatored and/or laminated/ Pagaa reataurAea at/ou pelliculAea Pagaa diacoiourad, atained or foxed/ Pagaa dAcoiorAea, tachetAea ou piquAea Pagaa datachc i/ Pagaa dAtachAea Showthrough/ Tranaparance I I Quality of print varie>a/ QualitA inAgaia de I'im^oreaaion Includea aupplementary material/ Comprend du matArial aupplAmentaire Only edition available/ Seule Adition diaponible Pagaa whoMy or partially obacured by errata aiipa, tiaauaa, etc., hava been refilmed to enaure the beat poaaibia image/ Lea pagaa totalement ou partlellement obacurciaa par un feuillet d'errata, une pelure, etc., ont AtA filmAea A nouveau de fapon A obtenir la meilieure image Tioaaibla. Tl to Tl P< o1 fil Oi bi th •i< ot fir ai4 or Tl ah Tl wl M dil en b« rig re< mt Thia item ia filmed at the reduction ratio checked below/ Ce document eat f ilmA au taux de rAduction indiquA ci-deaaoua. 10X 14X 1«X 22X 26X 30X / 3 tax 16X 2DX MX 28X 32X Tha copy film«d h«r« has baan raproducad thanks to tha ganarosity of: Library Division Provincial Archives of British Columbia Tha imagas appaaring hara ara tha bar/i quality poasibia conaidaring tha condition and lagibility of tha original copy and in kaaping with tha filming contract spacificationt. Original copia* in printad papar covars ara filmad baginning with tha front covar and anding on tha last paga with a printad or illustratad impras- •ion, or tha back covar whan appropriata. All othar original copias ara filmad baginning on tha first paga with a printad or illustratad impras- sion. and anding on tha last paga with a printad or illustratad imprassion. Tha last racordad frama on aach microficha shall contain tha symbol ~-^ (moaning "CON- TINUED"), or tna symbol y (moaning "END"), whichavar applias. Maps, platas. charts, ate. may ba filmad at diffarant raduction ratios. Thosa too larga to ba antiraly includad in ona axposura ara filmad baginning in tha uppar laft hand cornar. laft to right and top to bottom, as many framas as raquirad. Tha following diagrams illustrata tha mathod: L'axamplaira film* fut raproduit grAca it la gAnirosit* da: Library Division Provincial Archives of British Columbia Las imagas suivantas ont itA raproduitas avac la plus grand soin. compta tanu da la condition at da la nattat* da l'axamplaira f ilm«. at an conformity avac las conditions du contrat da filmaga. Las axamplairas originaux dont la couvartura an papiar ast imprimte sont filmte an commandant par la pramiar plat at an tarminant soit par la darniAra paga qui comporta una amprainta d'imprassion ou d'illustration. soit par la sacond plat, salon la cas. Tous las autras axamplairas originaux sont filmAs an commandant par la pramiAra paga qui comporta una amprainta d'imprassion ou d'illustration at an tarminant par la darniAra paga qui comporta una talla amprainta. Un das symbolas suivants apparaftra sur la darniAra imaga da chaqua microficha. salon la cas: la symbols -^^ signifia "A SUIVRE". la symbols V signifia "FIN". Las cartas, planchas, tablaaux. ate. pauvant Atre filmAs A das taux da reduction diffArants. Lorsqua la documant ast trop grand pour Atra raproduit an un seul clichA. il ast filmA A partir da I'angla supAriaur gaucha, da gaucha A droite, at da haut an bas. Bn pranant la nombra d'imagas nAcassaira. Las diagrammas suivants illustrant la mAthoda. 1 2 3 4 5 6 / ri^ ^ f y^ • TROTTmaS OF A TEIfDERFOOT OB Jl Bisit ta the Columbktt JiorbB. BT OLIVE PHILLTPPS WOLLEY, F.R.O.8., AUTHOB OF • 'SFOBT IN THE OBIMEA AND OAUOASaS,' ETC. LONDON : RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON, Pttbliehers in , mmum i^M«iiiwiiiW*ii ■niiiiiOi iim , ^ i \m'^ """'''■'^^ *" -» ^ ■*■' '* — • ^^ *- « -I- ^ - ... ^ „ r #. * TXT* ■- —>-„-—*, BY THE N.P. RAILWAY. II rising above the menial class of positions in which I saw them, I asked information from my fellow-travellers, who assured me, with apparent honesty, that no coloured man would be admitted in a high-class hotel, nor as a rule any Jew ; and though this latter seems incredible, and is probably untrue, I am the more inclined to believe the first statement, as I have seen in newspapers since my return that even actors were not until quite recently received in the very best hotels in New York. So much for freedom and equality in the land of Uncle Sam. The nigger seems to the ignorant hardly a brother, or at best only very much a younger brother yet. Of course, as we had come prepared with the lightest of garments, dust-coats, etc., we had no heat and very little alkali dust on our road, elements in a traveller's misery seldom wanting on the other lines across the American Continent. Our worst sorrow was that Mr. Villard's great picnic party was just in front of us, and, like a flight 12 BRITISH COLUMBIA. k \\ \ of locusts, had devoured every edible thing on the road, carrying off dining-cars and everything else in its train. So for the first few days we had bad enough times, getting what we could at roadside saloons, and com- forting ourselves as best we might with the conductor's trite philosophy, * The trouble isn't to get the food on the line, but to di-gest it.* How an American ever expects to digest his food is a problem to a * tender-foot,' as they call us new-comers. A stomach prepared by a steady course of tobacco-chewing from morn- ing to mid-day, and then surprised by the sudden advent of half a dozen courses, and a glass of iced-water, all arriving simultane- ously, or at least all withi^i the space of a few minutes, is to my mind a very much handicapped digesting organ. I presume it is in consideration of the telegraphic speed with which an American bolts his meal that in almost every American restaurant all the courses are served together ; still, it is a pity, as I often explained to the waiters, that they m . >« 28 BRITISH COLUMBIA. (i Ij river-communication enables it to keep down railway-rates, and it seems to bid fair to be- come a great distributive centre. On all such points the man who wants to speculate will get as good information, perhaps, from the conductor of the train, or even the Pullman porters, as from anyone else; for though liable to be themselves interested in such matters, these men constantly passing along the line have exceptional opportunities of obtaining in- formation. So, though the familiarity with which a conductor or porter will sit down alongside you in your smoking-car is rather contrary to our ideas of etiquav^e, as between employer and employed, it \a best to cultivate these people, as any conversation held between you and them is more likely to be to your advantage than to theirs. As the line leaves Montana and runs into Idaho, the nature of the country-side changes. From yellow corn-lands . and roll- ing oceans of prairie we have passed into the quaint, rugged, and forbidding Bad \ BY THE N.P. RAILWAY. 29 Lands. Now we leave them in turn, and enter a rockier region, where forest and moun- tains, rivers and canyons, look more beautiful, but are probably worth less. I have seen so much florid writing in guide-books and news- papers— in the pay, probably, of the new rail- way— about the natural beauties of Montana, Idaho, and the rest, that, even had I not seen the Caucasus and Switzerland, I hardly think I should let my pen run away with me on this subject. As it is, I confess to having seen from my railway window much fine scenery, a few glorious gorges, magnificent plains and sportsmen's paradises ; but as for scenery to rival any of our great Eastern wonderlands, I can only say that I don't (in all humility) think that they are to be seen from the rails of the N. P. Railway. My memory may be defective — perhaps I was asleep, or we passed it in the night — but if we did pass a mountain, properly so called, between St. Paul's and Portland, I have either forgotten it or never saw it. 'i « ti i n, 1 . %y^ I 'If-' III' ^1! I \ 1. I I 30 BRITISH COLUMBIA. V\ There were two other things besides fine scenery of which I had expected to see a great deal more than I actually did — to wit, what. I may call spittoon-practice and adver- tisements. I had expected to find every picturesque rock labelled * Smith's Gargling Oils,' or somebody else's 'Bitters,' and no place safe from the perils of expectoration. But though we saw one strange specimen of the advertising craze in New York, a huge statue of Lafayette so buried in garlands that until next day we could not find out who he was, and almost believed he was the identical Mr. Le Moult, florist, whose huge placards adorned every spare space on the statue ; yet along the N. P. Railway, as yet, no bill-sticker has done much harm. It seems hard, even in practical America, to make a hero's statue on the anniversary of his birth a hoarding for a tradesman's adver- tisements. The days slipped by at last, until, several hours late, and sufiering from indigestion and BY THE N.P. RAILWAY. 31 i alkali - water, we arrived at Portland in Oregon, after eighteen days' travel by sea and land, thankful to have crossed the con- tinent in safety, especially remembering those long spans of line laid on wooden trestles, 226 feet from the bottom of the canyon, in which we got a glimpse of men at work with a flume, washing, I believe, for gold. There are, perchance, many other things of which I might have made mention ; the beauty of the lumber-men's firelit camps, as we flashed past them in the wooded country, round Spokane falls, near which a valuable gold mine has just been discovered ; the deserted encampments where, in semi - subterranean hovels, the navvies had passed months of their lives before the line was laid ; the sudden rush and spread of a prairie fire, when a spark from the engine falling on the dry grasses near the track clad the whole place in flames — the spark that gleamed only like a dropped fusee one moment, bursting into tongues of fire the next, and before the train had taken me I! i 'ii 1 J Id. 32 BRITISH COLUMBIA. . i: If out of sight, filled the darkness of the prairie with leaping Barnes and lurid smoke. I don't suppose sach a fire would travel far, or do much harm ; but it might, and for that reason I presume it is that in most places a long line of black burnt country runs along- side the rails, as a safety-belt between the fire and the grazing-lands beyond. I might have told, too, of the sharpers who got on the cars at Wallula, and how, though they managed to rob a poor woman of her little all (tied up in a tempting bundle, and put away under her pillow), the combined astuteness and gallantry of the passengers compelled the thieves to disgorge their plunder; but the pace at which we have been coming seems to have got into my pen, which feels as anxious to get across the frontier into British Columbia and a shooting- camp as ever the penman was. Here we are, reader, over five thousand miles on our way, just arrived at the growing town of Portland, still decked in the baniiers ii i«i BY THE N.P. RAILWAY. 33 in which she greeted Mr. Yillard, the chief promoter, if not author, of her being. * Are you full up, conductor ?' yells a bustling Yankee. * Then fire her off right smart. We've had no breakfast yet,' and then, as my chum stumbles into the 'bus, treading on everyone's feet as he goes, one child of the West looks up without a smile, and in solemn nasal tones drawls out : * Mighty big feet of yourn, ain't they, stranger T and W., unable to remonstrate with a man he has already injured, relapses into silence under the libel, until we reach iiie worst hotel out West, St. Charles Hotel, • oitland. l;1 1-^ i m 8 'If n .»: ■ I II. PORTLAND AND THE * SOUND. Portland might to-day be taken as a fair type of the young American town * on the boom.' All along the line from St. Paul's, the talk of all the men we met had been of speculations (chiefly in * lots '), and the bud- ding future of the new world around us. Every town we passed through had its chances and its champions, and many of my fellow- traveUers were passing along the line simply as participators in the big land-gamble now enacting m Montana, Oregon, etc. But still the cry always was, * Wait till you get farther West !' And now we had got to the most Western town on the N. P. Kailway, and to the very heart of the business excitement |. PORTLAND AND THE ' SOUND: 35 of which the N. P. Railway has been the cause. Portland is certainly a fine young city, its buildings handsome and substantial ; not erected as temporary structures doomed to come down as soon as time and money can be found to build better. The site of the town is picturesque as well as commercially advan- tageous; the Williamette river hemming it round on one side, while ranges of low serrated hills, covered with pines and maples, shut it in on the other. But Portland is growing rapidly out of its frame ; and once you have gained a point of vantage, you will see that the town has already crept a long way over the river, while far up the hills on either hand the white villas of the wealthier citizens gleam among the bright foliage of the maple woods. When we reached Portland the town was not perhaps at its best, for the streamers and wreaths it had worn to greet Mr. Villard were still hanging about, and the general effect a week after the fete was not imposing. The 3—2 'I TM I4M mmmi^mi^m^fsssBas^svaim mmmmmgmmm 'i .1 Nil r i) ? L 36 BRITISH COLUMBIA, whole town seemed fuU of * drummers ' (t.e., bagmen, or commercial travellers), and every other shop-window contained a board, pla- carded over with notices of lots for sale. Better shops than those of Portland yon will have some difficulty in finding outside New York ; but the growth of the different insti- tutions has been extremely uneven, the hotels being especially behindhand. To our sorrow we were advised to put up at the St. Charles Hotel, and did so. The house is a good illustration of the rapidity with which the demand for luxuries and the change from frontier life to urban civilization has progressed in Portland, At first we were offered a den without a window or any means of lighting, day or night, except by candles. This we refused ; after which, and a delay of an hour, the big hotel supplied us with one of the two men-servants (Irish- men) .who do its whole work of bell-boys, boots, or light porters. This fellow did his best to pilot us along the maze of corridors K!.^. ■"-i^**,-., »-«**ii ■« mmmmmmmmmmmmt PORTLAND AND THE 'SOUND.* 37 and passages in which the different bedrooms are situated, but though a number is chalked on every door, there is no system, and the position of twenty-four is no clue to the probable whereabouts of twenty -five, A gorgeous carpet deadens your footfall in the passage, and lends a cheeriness to your room, to which your marble-topped furniture and fine swing-mirror give an air of down- right luxury, until your eye is startled by a roughly whitewashed wall, and your wrath aroused by a blind which cannot be pulled up, but is sustained by the simple insertion of a couple of pins. You turn round for the bell-boy, but he has vanished. You seek for the bell round and round the room, but no electric button or familiar bell-rope meets your eye ; you seek the passage. There is no bell nor bell-boy there; you shout, and only echo answers, and you return with the conviction upon you that after all you are really camping out, though in a comfortable camp, and, as is usual in such circumstances, f % ill 111 m 38 BRITISH COLUMBIA. must be prepared to wait upon yourself. But early morning in such a chamber is worse than the same hour in camp, where a natural tub is always close at hand. Lost on the highest story of a big hotel, cut off by unnumbered stairs and want of means of communication from your fellow- man^ ignorant of the geography of your abode, you are likely to pass a very miser- able morning; rambling about in dishabille to capture bell-boys or the early smirking chambermaid, from whom you ascertain that if you want a bath there is one at the comer of Fourth Street ; and if you want shaving- water in your room, * she guesses that the man at the bar will have some hot for some of his customers by this time ; leastways, you can go and see.' And so you can, and go and do anything else for yourself which you have a mind to ; and if you think that just because your name is John Bull, Esq., with a good balance at your bank, you are going to get servants to do most things for you n *"- ■ i.iiiinitii'lii>MiimifflVtftfr'ililHir^r-#irT4f i»i>Hiiii1hiliiHM>IIMtiilti iinii r'riiMir-ni « »iwiii»r,i..M;i2J^iJ'j];;iJj;;;2I^ PORTLAND AND THE 'SOUND: 39 Is in Portland, yon are extremely likely to go home disgusted. I snppose really good servants exist some- where out of England, but I cannot say I ever met with any ; and even there they are getting scarce, while the article exported to America certainly loses all its good qualities on the voyage out. Sunday was the first day of our sojourn in Portland, and though we did find a very good church in the town, we also found many other places of public resort much better filled. On this particular Sunday the greatest attraction offered to the public was a prize- fight held within the town limits, and de- scribed on the placards as an *■ honest knock- out affair ;' the second part of the programme to consist of a waltzing competition amongst lady amateurs, the prize, of a very magnificent description, to be awarded to the victor by grace and endurance. But ere long Portland will see better days even than these. Already the N. P. Eailway h ; -If i'. I 46 BRITISH COLUMBIA. has made some land speculator's fortmie by the pnrchase, at a very long price, of a site for a new hotel, and there is even now one excellent restaurant in the town ; while apart from the influx of business men, which can- not fail to follow on the completion of the new line, the neighbourhood has attractions in beautiful Mount Hood, the glacier of Mount Tacoma, and the broad waters of the Columbia river, which tourists will scarcely overlook. I was detained a long time at Portland by the temporaiy loss of my luggage, due as much to my bad management as to the rail- way company's neglect. But at the furriers' and the gunsmiths' I had no difficulty in pass- ing my time ; for this town is the chief depot for wapiti horns, perhaps, in the States, and more than one fine collection of these glorious trophies has found its way into England this year from the stores of Messrs. Kahn alone. About 20 dols. is the price for a fairly good head, and to those who have lllilliiniWIIIiliirlillBll f. PORTLAND AND THE ' SOUND: 41 no scruples about adorning their halls vith the result of other men's hunting, a wapiti- head for a ' fiver ' is cheap enough. It is a curious fact that cast antlers — * dead ' horns, as the Western men call them — unless dis- guised in paint and varnish, don't command nearly as high a price as those taken from a freshly-killed beast, and yet, except to the eye of a connoisseur, they look, so disguised, the same. Why is this, 0 ye who buy your trophies ? I was almost tempted to run down to the Nehalum Valley for a week among the wapiti, so good were the reports I heard of that district ; but short trips are rarely successful, so I abstained, and on my way home I heard that I had probably missed my last chance oi killing a wapiti in that valley, as the land, having proved to be excellent for agricultural purposes, is rapidly filling up with settlers. Tired at last of waiting for my luggage, I made up my mind to go on to Vancouver without it, relying on a friend I had made en route from St. Paul's to meet and take care £ ^ wl m M f 4a BRITISH COLUMBIA, m\ ii I w of me, even thou'^h destitute, on my arrival at Victoria. So one niglit W. and I bid each other good-bye on the wharf, intending to meet again in a month's time on his Cali- fomian vineyard, an intention which I failed to carry out owing to the press of other engagements. I had hoped to be able to say something of the wine-growing interests in ^ California from personal observation ; as it is, I learnt a good deal from hearsay near the vine-growing districts, but was never in them. The wines I tasted of Califomian make were a champagne villainous beyond all conception, a red wine, strong and distinctly drinkable, which gave you no headache next day, but left a slightly unpleasant earthy after-taste in your mouth, and a light white wine like hock, which I thought extremely good if you drank the best brands only, and which had the ad- vantage of being very cheap. The difficulty the viticulturists of California have to contend with is not in the land, but in the people. It is the home consumption which must pay the PORTLAND AI^D THE 'SOUND: '( 43 producer, and until the American lower classes drink wine of the same class and to the same degree that the French peasants do, I don't fancy wine-growing in California will have reached its hest days. At present the average Yankee does not drink wine, hut is a teetotaller during dinner, which he washes down with a deadly draught of ice-water, amusing himself for the rest of the day hy poisoning himself with * nips ' of strong spirits. Starting at night from Portland, much of the scenery of the Columhia river is missed, and to give anything like an idea of the journey from Portland to Victoria, I must roll two trips into one. A nohle river, with dark hanks of richly-timhered lands, with mists rolling away and giving heautiful glimpses of hlue water and wooded distances, is all the impression I managed to glean from my peep at the Columbia river ; but from Tacoma my memory serves me better. Tacoma is at the southern end of the sound, and is the port whence travellers embark for Victoria in Van- . '1^ iv 5.: \,W. ' t^: t\ ( m at^5 ;■ u 44 BRITISH COLUMBIA, couver's Island. It takes its name from the re-chriatened peak, Mount Rainier, formerly Tacoma, which towers over it, and which is in the near future (so say the prophets) to attract swarms of tourists to the neigh- bourhood, win laurels from Switzerland for its glaciers, and above all make the fortune of speculators in building-lots at Tacoma. A new trail has just been opened from the town to the foot of the chief glacier, and men say that apart from beauties of scenery, the tourist who carries a rifle will be rewarded by (at least) a glimpse of the Rocky Mountain goat. But Tacoma, though big with promise, is in a very embryo state at present; in fact, but for a wooden shanty at the railway station, and the landing-stage, there is very little outward sign of a town as yet. A crowd of exceedingly loquacious Chinamen, presum- ably discharged navvies, were all we saw of the population, and right thankful wore we that our stay was of the shortest. To my mind Mount Hood, the beautiful i «*V<» rW**"*^'**'*'* ' "iwppi mmm ( If PORTLAND AND THE 'SOUND: 45 peak that looks down on Portland, is a more beautiful mountain than Tacoma, but this is a mere matter of taste. But the sound itself from Tacoma to Victoria is beautiful as a dream, and as I saw it last, its blue waters fid,3hing under an October sun, simply alive with shoals of what I imagine were herrings or pilchards, glancing and gleaming just below the surface like living streaks of silver lightning, I believe it was at its best. The beauty of the sound is that wherever you turn it seems ftiU of life and plenty. The * cultus ' ducks, so called because they are unfit for food (* cultus ' in Chinook means worthless), were busy at the fishing, and so full-fed were they that their short wings could hardly lift their heavy bodies from the wsner, as they flapped away, scared by the approach of the steamers, their dragging legs leaving a long line of silver-bright splashes as they skimmed off to quieter feeding -grounds. The long-wingeu gulls seemed to have hardly time to look at us, so busy were they with the glancing shoals. \M 'if! J * I Mi; m 46 BRITISH COLUMBIA. .1 i ■ 11 On every jetty stood fishers with long poles, from which hung a string, at the end of which was a triangle of metal, furnished with harbs, and this they sunk among the herrings crowding round the wooden posts below, drawing it up with a jerk now and again, to bring two or three of the fish foul-hooked to the surface at every attempt. Here and there we passed a port, Madison or Ludlow, one busy with a lumber-mill, the other with tall ships a-building near the water's edge, the regular strokes of the builders' hammers sounding musical in the distance. At Fort Ludlow, where the steamer stops for water, is the largest lumber-mill on the &ound — so large, indeed, that it cuts up 250,000 feet of lumber in twenty-four hours, and had, when I passed it, a boom at the back of it containing 4,000,000 feet of rough logs waiting for the sawyers. These logs are put into the boom at 7 dols. per 1,000 feet by the lumber-men, and are turned out of the mill as i \, ■ I iMaw^i iwig^|if^y^j««»i>. ip^t'y fi iP^WM PORTLAND AND THE 'SOUND: 47 6 baulks and rough lumber generally, at 12 dols. per 1,000 feet, or at 25 dols. or 30 dols. as rustic boarding and ceiling-boards. Bound about lie other logs, signs of a new industry, queer crooked pieces of tough wood, forming two sides of a triangle, thus L* These are for ship's knees, and are made from the roots of the red fir, used in ship-building, and said to be stronger than English oak. This industry is barely a year old. But every part of the red fir has its u^ and even the bark, which in a tree measuring nine feet through is as much as eight or nine inclies thick, makes the best of fuel when dry, giving out, I am told, a greater heat than coal. The three great lumber-mills of the sound. Ports Townsend, Gamble, and Ludlow, are the property of a syndicate of San Francisco capitalists, and very busy they all seemed. But the prettiest sight in the sound on that bright day was Port Madison, its shore and wharves red with sawdust and fresh-cut lumber, alive with busy men and patient :\ ^"f- 01 1 '.I I < f if! 48 ^JlfT/S/r COZPMB/A. l>y refasW to * bn«f ' v.T ^ ''**"^^ Seattle boasts an hotel even , 1 t::^^: ^"'« ^0^-. a^d leaves Victi even now which, to shame when we get to Victoria '^ria out in the coid. StiJI intense energy and tliough the air of g^o' has vanished- PORTLAND AND THE 'SOUND: 49 there is something that appeals more strongly to the English mind. It cannot be the mere fact that we are under our own old flag again, though that means much to a Britisher. I own I cannot see Victoria very plainly — not plainly enough, perhaps, to judge her fairly ; for a place, after all, is what the people make it — and there is such a throng of jolly, kindly faces between me and the town, that I cannot see its imperfections if I would. But this I can say, I came across no place in America in which I would be so content to stay as in Victoria. It is not only the British flag; it is not only that the English tongue is spoken with its nati\ e accent ; that people are civil, and porters public servants ; that hotel cads no longer damn their unoffending employers ; but it is, in a measure^ at least, that here there is time to rest for a moment, and fancy once more that there is something else in the world to live for besides the accursed dollar. At Seattle, Portland, St. Paul's, Chicago, 4 [ . • t ■* \\ '!> ■i m "**«**^*»»" i 50 BRITISH COLUMBIA, II I f all the way back to the New York landing- stage, the air has been full of speculations ; figures have floated constantly before your eyes ; everyone * has been doing sums, and you yourself, contrary to your nature, have joined in the general pastime ; conversation has been saturated with mercantile phrases ; and altogether the dollar devil has got such a hold of you that you have begun to feel as feverishly eager as the rest. But here there is peace. Not that there is any lack of energy or even speculation within moderate bounds ; but in Victoria the English element has asserted itself and declared, * Business before pleasure, if you like ; but business without pleasure, never;' so that you wake, as it were, from a railroad night- mare, and rejoice again in the belief that the dollar was made for man, and not man for the dollar. -i*.;W«J«l*->.«»' III. VICTORIA, B.C. Of conrse, for all those who stay at Victoiia, the Driard House is the only ahiding-place, an hotel to which Paradise must have contributed the cook, and Hades the waiters. When Henri and Alphonse, or whatever their con- founded names are, were waiting, conversation became hopeless and life a misery. Plates, chairs, tables, all were spanked about the room with a vigour as disagreeable to the guest as it was dangerous to the crockery. But the cooking surpassed that of the Windsor Hotel, New York, and although this may seem an unworthy subject on which to waste words, anyone who has passed a week in Pullman cars on the trail of such an all-devouring 4—2 m 4: ill 1 ■ «i 52 BRITISH COLUMBIA, army as Mr. Villard's party of 1883, will understand why I felt so keenly the merits of a good hotel. Besides, Victoria is dis- tinctly a place for English sportsmen to visit, and the first question they require answered is. What sort of an hotel is there, and what do you call it ? Victoria itself has grown from a station of the Hudson Bay fur-traders into a goodly town ; not perhaps a very imposing one in the matter of huildings, hut set amid such hright waters and richly tinted foliage as few other towns can boast. It contains, too, most of the things that make life pleasant, and is growing rapidly at the present moment. Wooden trottoirs are at the sides of most of the streets ; there are any quantity of good substantial houses ; the shops are numerous, and hold most of the things that men and women have any real need of ; there is a club with three or four billiard-tables, a good cook, a reading-room supplied with all the leading English papers and periodicals; there is a I — >• i tiWfc MPBHW^W •fOM m , r VICTORIA, B.C. 53 covered lawn-tennis court for wet weather, which serves also as a very good ball-room, and is not allowed to decay for want of use ; there is plenty of pleasant society, English settlers and Canadian residents ; military and naval men, barristers, and others ; several of the houses have lawns for tennis, as good as the best of the courts people play on in English country places, and at some at least of these houses there are tennis - parties regularly every week. Where naVal men are stationed social stagnation is impossible, so that no one need dread dulness at Victoria. Perhaps the first great influx of settlers into British Columbia and Victoria was due to the reported discovery of gold in the pro- vince in 1868. Though the gold did not make as many people's fortune as they ex- pected it to, there are now a dozen different industries more profitable to take the place of gold-mining, and those who came to seek gold have remained to can salmon, to work coal- mines (Vancouver's greatest resource), to en- m n 'ml mti^^nm 54 BRITISH COLUMBIA, gage in the lumber-trade and cultivate the marsh-lands of the Frazer river. But what- ever the business they follow, they all agree in making the wandering Englishmen who in- fest the Driard very welcome guests, and the greatest difficulty I experienced was in accept- ing only sufficient invitations to leave some little time for my shootmg-trip. Even hunt- ing is not quite an unknown sport in this happy colony, and two or three times a year Captain D.'s hunt startles the natives, and does its best to smash a way through the very formidable timber which fences in the little tract of country round Victoria in which the forest allows horses room to gallop. But over on the mainland, report says, a real pack of hounds exists, and hunts foxes or coyotes with no small success. As for game round Victoria, there is no lack of it, though it is not quite as easy to make a big bag of birds as at home. Deer — poor little beasts, as far as their heads go — grouse of two kinds, and quail abound. The officers of the mm ■HM*Mi ■MMMMiMNMMai^^ ■ -r»«l««WV*«**W«!«^' V- VICTORIA, B.C. 55 F fleet bagged several deer within a few miles of the town whilst I was in the country, and on one occasion I myself came on a party of sportsmen and their wives, seated on the ground by a woodland lake not six miles out of Victoria, their hounds lying about round the encampment and three bucks in their dog-cart, the result of one night's camping out. This was a good bag ; but why do gentlemen of Victoria kill deer in this unin- teresting way ? Stalking tries a man's woodcraft and his wind ; if you still-hunt, that is, walk up your deer, you pass through much beautiful forest scenery and get many a quiet glimpse of the home-life of the tall beasts of the woodland ; but when you turn in your hounds and wait till the deer come like dumb driven cattle to the water, beside which you have sat till you have got cold and cramped, there is none of the credit due to the quiet pot-shot which a quick snap-shot at a buck on the jump might earn, and your dog has had all the fun and exercise which ] r , a n i 11 S6 BRITISH COLUMBIA, should have been yours. Besides, you kill too many deer in this way ; and what you don't kill, you hunt clean out of the country. Between Victoria and Goldstream, a charm- ing spot not twelve miles from the town, I heard of twelve deer killed along the road on one day, in this manner. Goldstream is a place for picnics ; a place which will linger in my mind as the scene of an adventure not easily forgotten. One of my friends (forgive me, D., if you ever read this) had taken me out for a drive to Goldstream, with two ladies and a clergyman. Now, the clergyman had no pretensions to coachmanship, and I am no Jehu, though just competent to hold the reins if the beasts will go quietly. The road out was beautiful, and it was great fun looking at the occasional chasms we skirted, and the fallen timber we had to circumvent ; it is true that the road was so ill-defined that occasionally we seemed only to be following D. through the most open part of the wood. But when we got to wasssmamm. mmtm mm k VICTORIA, B.C. 57 our destination, the food, though rough, was welcome ; and a good deal of fun was derived from the discovery of a fair deceiver's cache in a hollow tree, from which we extracted one powder-puff, one piece of chalk, a small- toothed comh, and some rouge. The wood- land nymphs of Victoria, when picnicking, apparently require more than the mirror of a crystal stream for their toilette. Meanwhile the night closed in ; to our horror there was no moon, and some one had forgotten the carriage-lamps. A dark night at home, in your own dogcart with no lights, and hig open ditches on either hand, is un- pleasant; though if you have had a good dinner, followed hy spiritual consolation, and a good cigar, it is endurahle, almost amusing. But a dark night on an unknown road, with two ladies to take care of, a certainty that there is a great deal more unsafe road than * good going ' the whole way home, and a fallen tree or a precipice every twenty yards, is not a thing to be desired. \^ m nil 58 BRITISH COLUMBIA. In about three minutes we were fairly lost ; the road was only a trail, and it was so dark that you could no*^^ have seen a toll-bar gate at te'^ paces. It was a very slow progress, and not a cheery one ; but the rider on the white horse (how we thanked Heaven for that beast's colour) went ever on before, and by the greatest mercy the final catastrophe did not occur until the ladies had been landed in safety at their own homes, after which, on the way to the stables, a long- suffering lynchpin dropped out, and all was chaos. The two new railways have of course given an impetus to commercial energy in Victoria ; house property has increased in value, aod new settlers keep comirg in. Two or three different bodies of young Ji^nglishmen have established, or are just establishing themselves on the island. The timber trade and coal perhaps employ most capital, but these are far from being the only industries. Farm- ing is extensively carried on at Comox and mmm ss: . VICTORIA, B.C. 59 elsev/here ; and though on Vancouver's Island itself there is but little prairie- land, there is a good deal of cattle-ranching on the main- land, while the rich cranberry swamps of the Frajer river are being dyked, and made to yield large returns. At present these lands are being held at high prices for America, as much as 40 to 50 dols. an acre for partially improved lands being asked and obtained ; bat the verdict of an experienced English farmer leads me to believe they arc worth all the money. It is difficult to see how it can be otherwise, when we consider that hay is sold out here for from 10 to 15 dols. a ton, and an acre of this land yields from 3^ to 5 tons per acre in the two cuts, for here they always get a con- siderable aftermath. The hay is not perhaps quite of the quality you would give to your hunters in England, but such as it is it meets with a ready sale. The cranberries them- selves, which grow naturally on the delta, are talked of as another probable source of I. { M Y% Ill if m ' I fi &1 '"••'^-rrsifcuB 6o BRITISH COLUMBIA. profit; and com, rape and carrots all do marvellously well. As to the fisheries, the reports did not seem so favourable; but then the only branch of fishing much attended to is tho salmon-can- ning, and there seems to be considerable variation in the annual supply of fish. In the fishmongers' shops I noticed hahbut of enormous size, and cod, together with oysters brought down from various points on the sound, where beds of them have lately been discovered* Sturgeon, too, can be obtained in large quantities ; but it does not seem to have occurred to anyone that caviar would be better worth canning than salmon. As for herrings, they are in such quantities in the sound, that a company not long since tried to convert their dried bodies into guano, or a substitute for it, having first extracted from them the oil in which they are so rich. Want of experience, probably, in the method of extracting the oil and drying the fish, pre- vented their enterprise becoming the success i'T^iKf**- .'/<^47;ffi»<«w>r??^-'"*'*'' VICTORIA, B.C. 6i they hoped for ; but this is still regarded as one of the fortune-making industries of the future. In Victoria itself the climate is as much like that of Devonshire as any I am ac- quainted with, though to my mind not so ener- vating, and all fruits do wonderfully well on the island ; grapes and melons ripening in the open air. The crop of pears in several orchards which I visited was simply amazing, each separate bough being supported with props to save it from being broken down with the weight of its own fruit. The latest re- port which was filling the minds of Victorians with enthusiasm when I left, was that of a marvellously rich copper - mine on the Simalkameen river, which had just been redis- covered. Samples of pretty peacock ore were in everyone's hands, and hope ran high. Take Victoria all in all, its people, its in- dustries, its climate, its chances of sport, its beauty, its various opportunities for pleasure as well as profit, I know no place on earth to 1^^ I i n I f - J „,„,.„,-^,^,f,J,^ -"■ —•- ;t';.tT \ It €2 BRITISH COLUMBIA. If III s which I would rather be exiled; and if the recent visit of the Marquis of Lome has not given rise to an unusual degree of loyalty, I should say there were no more loyal English anywhere than on Vancouver's Island. Of €Ourse Victoria has its drawbacks — what place has not ? Servants seem exceptionally hard to get, and wages exceedingly high. Indians during the fishing season earn as much as 3 dols. per diem, and Chinese cooks take nothing less than from 30 to 50 dols. a month, and even then have an awkward knack of leaving without notice, whenever they feel so inclined. Dress also is a difficulty ; but that is the same all over America, and as the * Masher ' is an unknown quantity in the colony as yet, an old coat is not likely to suffer seriously from comparison with its neighbours. Perhaps, after all I have said about Victoria, it is only fair to add that the writer of these lines has serious thoughts of sojourning for some years in British Columbia, so that the reader may either refer the favour- VICTORIA, B.C. 63 able report of this place to the author's desire to please his future fellow-colonists, or look upon his choice of the town for his own residence as the strongest proof of his belief in its advantages. One word more about Victoria and the neighbourhood before I throw off my town coat and start on the hunt. As long as new-comers keep clear of hired labour, and do all that they have to do for themselves, life in their new home vail be cheaper than it was in the old. The moment the question of domestic servants or farm labourers comes before them, their difficulties will begin. To live economically in Victoria, or in its neighbourhood, you must do all your work for yourself. Domestic servants, English, American, or Chinese — and most men em- ploy the latter — cost from 30 to 40 dels, per month and their keep ; even then you are never safe, for a Chinaman is seized by un- accountable fits of idleness, or a yearning for social pleasure, and will give you notice and I ) I aikiiia ii^iaf turn. «i iw«iiPiini« mwi 'naSSBSk vitta* 74 BRITISH COLUMBIA. about the bays in the warm sunshine, from time to time drawing up their lines to clear them from weeds, or give the spoons a sharper spin, all the while paddling only just enough to keep their little crafts in motion. A pipe and a smoke-dried salmon with a bit of bread are all they want in the way of supplies, and they find no lack of customers for their fish at a shilling apiece. The first place we called at was the home of one Cockshin, a mighty chief, who is so far civilized that he lives in a little detached barn of his own, with a yard round it about the size of a Kensington back -garden, and as much cultivated. A prolonged parley in English brought the chief to the door, screen- ing a match from the wind with his shirt-tail, and thereby displaying a very shapely, if very dirty, pair of * understandings.' His house was just a big wooden box, with nothing but a few rags and a pipe in it ; but it was the best Indian house I saw in Vancouver, and the owner of it spoke excellent English, and A CRUISE IN A FOG. 75 really seemed like an enlightened old savage. At any rate, he knew that there were half-a- dozen industries which would pay him as well, and not demand from him so much hard work as packing my camp outfit into the interior. So he refused to come with us, and retired to his rag-pile. From Cockshin's house we groped our way to the ranche, a big barn, or rather a collec- tion of big barns, large enough to hold several hundred people, and used as a common domi- cile by the red men when at home. In front of each stood one or more tree- stumps, rudely blazoned with all manner of quaint devices in strong colours, and terminating at the top in the head of some bird or beast. On the doors, too, were similar devices, and these, I am told, are the f,rmorial bearings either of the tribe or its chiefs. The ranche was, at the time I visited it, almost empty. The interior had no furni- ture, no partition — nothing to break the monotony cf a big bare mud floor but the f. ' !■; h 11 i ; ■it{ ''H <- m Hi l^gtt. r ■WMi" ■ iw ♦^lifca nvn PiHHI 76 BRITISH COLUMBIA. ashes of a fire or two and tLe columns sup- porting the roof, draped with the odoriferous hides of deer and other beasts. Bound the walls were a number of shelves, something hke the bunks in a ship's cabin. Most of them were untenanted, but from the dirty robes on one or two of them we unearthed an Indian and his squaw, or *• cluchman,' as they call them in this part of the world. My guide shook them up without ceremony, and a more villainously ugly set, men and women, 1 never had the misfortune to see. None of them had energy enough to object to our unceremonious call, but neither had any of them energy enough to accom!>any us. In despair, we returned to the village, and there, down by the wharf, on a veritable dung-heap, we discovered another small nest of unsavoury natives. In a small hat, shared by two dogs and some poultry, dwelt a, man and his wife. The whole place was festooned with green hides and salmon in every stage, from raw to dry. On the floor wore bowls of A CRUISE IN A FOG. 77 roe and the livers of dog-fish, and the den smelt as nothing else on eanh can smell. F. shook up the man, and the wife sat sleepily peering from her blankets whilst we bargained with her spouse. P. was getting sleepy (it was now 2 a.m.), and the more sleepy he grew the stronger grew his powers of persuasion. The Indian yielded at last, turned out, whipped the blanket and bedding generally off his squaw, piled it up on his own shoulders, and followed us out into the darkj leaving her to keep warm as best she could until his return. On our way to the boat we peeped in at the coal-mines, and saw the works going as busily as if it was midday. The coal-fields of Vancouver are her greatest claim to future importance, as tliey are of large extent (some say almost all Vancouver is a coal-bed) ; the coal is of excellent quality — so good, indeed, as to find a ready sale at a good price in San Francisco, iu spite of the duty imposed upon it ; and at the present moment at least 1,000 f 1 \\ % ,11 t ■U i <' ^ r ei>*mJ^ ,. — r^l mt FT 78 BRITISH COLUMBIA, . miners are employed at Nanaimo alone, and, if my informants were not all unreliable, the annual output of coal in Vancouver is now between two and three hundred thousand tons. Having conveyed my captive and his blankets to the saloon of the little s.s. Maude, and seen him comfortably bedded down on the floor, I retired to my own cabin, and slept until breakfast. Of course, the fog still covered the face of the waters, lifting now and again just enough to give us a glimpse of some thickly-timbered headland, or charm- ing bevy of tiny wooded islets, in the shelter of which wild-fowl clustered, looming in the mist almost as large as small islands them- selves. The navigation of the Strait of Georgia from Nanaimo to Comox in a thick fog is not easy, and more than once we passed painfully close to an ugJy-looking rock. The skipper of our craft was an oldish man and a nervous. Of course, we had to crawl, at A CRUISE IN A FOG. 79 times going so slowly that we hardly seemed to make any progress ; and on my hegging to be put on shore at Qualicum, the landing- place for Albemi, I was told that I should be landed if the fog did not prevent our sighting the bay. My idea was to land at Qualicum, whence a trail goes through the forest to the settlement at the head of the Albemi canal. The settlement is an agricultural one, occupying one of the few spots on Vancouver sufficiently clear for cultivation ; but an eighteen-mile trail to the coast must be a sad bar to the prosperity of these forest farmers. From Albemi I had intended to strike out for the great central lake, on which I ex- pected to find wapiti. The chief difficulty in my way was that of getting to Albemi, as there is no one living now at Qualicum ; and, even if the trail had been sufficiently clear for me to find it, eighteen miles would have been a long tramp with such a load as I liad to carry. Conceive my horror then. ( (^. nil i in '4' V , m r mm Mi ■i 80 BRITISH COLUMBIA. when, as we neared the hay, the captain came to tell me that he could not find my Indian anywhere. On hoard the Maude there is little space to hide a stowaway, and a personal inspection convinced me that though he had left his hlankets hehind him, my captive had escaped. Here then I was haffled again, and had to resign myself to fate, hoping to make a fresh start from Comox. The fog grew from bad to worse, and time would have hung heavily on my hands had my fellow-passengers been less interesting than they were. Amongst them were Englishmen who had come out to Van- couver six-and-twenty years ago, in the time of the gold-craze, and when that had passed away, had settled along tlie coast, living a wild, free life. Deer were always plentiful in Vancouver, as they are, indeed, to-day ; so they shot their own venison, caught trout from every brook, speared salmon in the season, found abundance of clams on the shore and berries in the bush, extracted oil *■ \ 4 A CRUISE IN A FOG. 8i for their lamps from the dog-fish, and for the most part took to themselves temporary wives from among the natives, who might ' mend them, tend them,' and teach them the ways of bush-life. Nearly all of these old pioneers have been gold-miners, and the fever is far from dead in their breasts yet. Most of them know of some < claim ' in the momitains, which, if properly worked, would make a whole nation of millionnaires. Some of them have known what it is to earn 2^000 dols. a week ; still more have worked for six months in such places as Alaska without ever seeing flour or finding gold. One man I met had been one of a party which had gone up into Alaska to prospect. For six months they lived entirely on fish and game, never tasting bread all that time. At last, when success seemed almost within their grasp, they could stand the hardship no longer. Some had died, others were dying ; none wore well, and all were, as they tersely put it, * beaten down to bed-rock.' So they G 6' i .11- , ■(! mmm J; 83 BRITISH COLUMBIA, ii built and manned a canoe, in which they made a joarney of 500 miles, getting back to their fellow-men destitute of all but life and their canoe. Very few such men seem to have had a persistent run of ill-luck ; most of • them have ' struck it ' once or twice, but the money comes too suddenly, and finds its wings at once. Such of these mining adven- turers as I met were, however, as different from the miner of romance as is the Van- couver Indian from Mr. Fenimore Cooper's Delaware. These fellow-travellers of mine were not men with big oaths in their mouths, starred desperation in their faces, and a couple of six-shooters in their belts ; but only quiet rugged men, with tanned hides and cheery faces, which looked like indexes of kindly hearts, and their only weapons a bundle of mysterious iron implements somewhere in the steerage. The men who are perhaps best informed about the settlers and their affairs along this \ A CRUISE IN A FOG. 83 coast are the stewards, parsers, and such Uke of the small steamers plying up the straits. At every port they have husiness to transact, and money-lending to impecunious settlers seems to pay better than the office of ship's steward. They are anxious to advise pas- sengers as to investments, and act no doubt as amateur estate agents. But whilst I am writing of these matters we have been slowly creeping along the coast ; have picked up a boat containing an Indian who is sup- posed to know the strait well, and who is now advising with our half-distracted captain. All round us are small islands and big rocks ; and so clear and shallow is the water, that I can actually count the rays of a star- fish Iv vKg on the bottom. All at once there is a cr, , i.nd we go slowly on to a big rock with a bump which throws us oflf our feet. Luckily the little boat went straight at the obstacle, caught the blow in her strongest part, and did herself no harm. After this 6—2 r- IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 1.0 I.I ■ 50 '"'^^^ amsSs 1^ 1^ III 2.2 lAo mil 2.0 11.25 nni 1.4 n M 1.6 Sciences Corporation 23 WIST MAIN STRUT WEBSTIR.N.Y. US80 (716) 872-4503 1^>T^^ ^^lA '^^:^^ v^ L J.I ll»v'.'.»..'U'»l.l!w»...,JlUll. "^^S^WIFWBHi mnmmmm^ u M I ' \ ill 84 BRITISH COLUMBIA. interest in the navigation of the ship increased, as did the fog ; and when we made Comox, 164 miles from Victoria, we were sincerely thankful, though wo had to knock about for an hour in harbour before we could find our way to the landing-stage, notwithstanding a system of signals which we kept up with those on shore. At Comox I was lucky enough to secure the services of the policeman, *Joe Eodello/ an Italian, who speaks English, French, Chinook, and other varieties of the human tongue, drives a fur-trade with the tribes in his vicinity, takes care of the church, and is the best man for any wandering English sportsman to confide in. A really good hotel, built entirely of timber by its present proprietor, Mr. Fitzpatrick (who, in spite of his name, is not an Irishman), and kept as clean as a new pin by his good wife, affords capital accommodation of a rough sort, but so good of its kind that ladies who care to accompany their husbands on their shooting expeditions might do worse than put up there. wmm mm Pi A CRUISE IN A FOG. 85 Unluckily for me, the house was undergoing repairs, so that only one room was available for visitors, and that was just then occupied by a lady and gentleman from Victoria, so that I had to put myself in the hands of the police for the night, and a very fair cell old * Joe * gave me, with the local law-court on one side of me, and the church on the other. Both these establishments are under * Joe's ' roof. Comox is one of the great farming points on Vancouver, and settlements and clearings stretch back for some distance inland along what is, I believe, the Courtney river. Comox is also believed to be a coal district, and has the advantage of being a fairly flat land, though too densely timbered for farming operations of any great extent as yet. Unfortunately for me, I had another difficulty to overcome at Comox, on which I had not counted ; of which, indeed, I had not heard. At Nanaimo tiie Indians were busy working ; here they were busier playing. The particular )i "m rifif m ^ vr.--?'!Kr?r.,« ^^S5=™»5=«P7!?"=:?B»T'?«^raS5BJ*!iWliB* m^mmmmm ^ 86 BRITISH COLUMBIA. w d nature of their entertainment was a/potlatch/ or *potlash/ I cannot quite tell how the word should be spelt ; nor, indeed, did even the omniscient ' Joe ' seem to have a very clear conception of what a ' potlash * was. He said he had been amongst these Indians and others almost all his lifoj and had shared in many such entertainments, but had never quite understood them yet. As the day after my arrival at Comox was as foggy as ever, I decided to try to see somethi7ig of this mysterious affair, and per- suaded ' Joe ' to take me out to the ranches in the afternoon, hoping, at the same time, to hear of a man above * potlashing,' who would act as my guide. The ranche is a good way out of the village of Comox, and the way to it leads through a thick forest, in which the ugly grey fog made everything hideous, and dropped dismally from the fir- woods. London in November is bad enough, but a four days' fog which shuts out sun and 'iv A CRUISE IN A FOG. 87 landscape entirely, from dawn to nightfall, is almost too bad for London, and sufficient to depress any spirits. No wonder that when in the last week of 1883 the sunshine recorded at Greenwich was 'nil/ the crime -list for that week contained 153 murders and suicides. A light flickering through the boards of the ranche, and the sound of Indian music (!), banished our gloomy thoughts as we emerged from the forest. The ranches stand along the shore, a long line of canoes drawn up at the water's edge below them, and several highly coloured effigies keep guard over the houses. These idols, which the Van- couver Indians set up, seem to obtain very little reverence from their owners ; for as we approached, one was doing admirable service as an extempore Aunt Sally for a crowd of small boys, and another had an even worse billet. The door of the ranche was a large board, designed like a bird of many colours and quaint shape, through which, about two msm wmmKm 88 BRITISH COLUMBIA. I feet six from the ground, a circular holo gave a visitor of moderate bulk a chance of an un- easy and ungraceful entry into the ranche. Boughly speaking, it seems a ' potlash ' is an entertainment lasting any time from a week to three months, provided by one tribe for another, and entailing on the tribe so entertained the duty of receiving their hosts in like manner on some future occasion, generally at the same date in the succeeding year. Still, a *• potlash ' is not merely a feast, but a season for the settlement of all debts, and above all the occasion for innumerable gifts. These gifts are made only by the hosts, and though apparently free gifts, the accept- ance of them imposes on the ' donees ' the duty of returning them with considerable interest to the * donors * at their next merry meeting. He who can afford to give the finest gifts obtains a recognised social position; and, indeed, * Joe ' assured me that chieftain- ship was attained in this way. I tried very 'i: A CRUISE IN A FOG. 89 hard to understand the whole system, and to see who got any benefit out of the gifts except the traders who sold the blankets ; but I was obliged to give it up, and shall content myself with relating what I saw. V As we neared the ranche, a flood of light and a babel of sounds proceeding from the interior of the building informed us that the ceremony had begun. In the usually dim wilderness of mud floor three great fires blazed ; piles of dry salmon, long canoe-shaped troughs filled with flour, seething caldrons filled with blocks of meat, and pyramids of new blankets, told a story of plenty, and gave promise of *high old times ' for the assembled tribes. And yet many white men still remember when the Indians, even of Nanaimo, worked willingly for thiee tobacco-leaves per diem. On one side of the fires, squatting on the sleeping-shelves which lined the wall, were the visitors, passive spectators, so far, of the scene. Opposite to them stood the men of m t 90 BRITISH COLUMBIA. Comox drawn up four deep, each two ranks facing inwards, and supporting on the left hand a rough plank, on which they beat time to a monotonous chant with a small fagot of wood. None of the Indians were in gala costume, and my guide told me that they never paid much attention to dress, even on the greatest occasions. After the chorus of board-thumpers had chanted themselves hoarse and worked themselves into a violent state of heat and excitement, a *■ cluchman/ or woman, in a bright cloak of Birmingham manufacture, stood up in front of the men, and began dancing a i^as seul in time to the chant, holding out her arms with the elbows kept close to her sides, the hands expanded and held palm downwards. In this constrained attitude she continued to dance, turning slowly to the left and then back again to the right, never doing more than half a turn, and never leaving the spot on which she first stood up. I watched her at first with interest, increased by the fact that the firelight that glowed on 4 CRUISE IN A FOG.. 91 her swarthy face revealed no trace of animation there, her expression never varying, any more than dance or tune ; but by degrees interest grew to a painful sort of fascination as this nightmare of a woman kept slowly revolving, never changing in anything and never seeming to tire. I can't tell which gave in first, the band or the dancer. I was becoming too giddy to watch either much longer, and began to feel as if I was in the hands of a mesmerist, or was the subject of some satanic incantation. Noiselessly the woman ceased from among us, and a stillness which seemed unnatural reigned in place of the chant of the thumpers. Then arose a man of Comox, and another from Albemi kept his eye on him. He of Comox was a species of public recorder, and the Albemi man was there to check his accounts. In the tones of a London milkman the recor- der commenced a recital of the gifts made at the last * potlash ' by the men of Albemi to those r I y. |; 1. :1 V i| I 92 BRITISH COLUMBIA, of Comox. How he kept his acconnts I don't know. He had no book to refer to, but as he never suffered correction I presume he was pretty accurate. As the bill against the hosts was a very long one, and likely to occupy the attention of the house for the rest of the night, my guide and I slipped quietly away at this point in the proceedings. Outside the ranches one generally sees amongst the groups of children a large pro- portion whose fair skins bespeak their mixed race. What becomes of the poor little fellows brought up in the filth and ignorance of a fishing Indian's camp I don't know, but I hope the priest looks after them. As far as Eodello knew, the Indians about this coast have very crude notions of religion. They believe in a God, and look for some one to come, as the Jews look for a Messiah, and amongst them the priests of the Eomish Church have most success, the Indians believing little in missionaries of other churches, whose dress is as the dress of laymen, and whose ritual is A CRUISE IN A FOG. 93 BO simple that their whole religion appears to these savages like a hook without pictures to an infant, uninteresting and incomprehensihle. Is the increasing gorgousness of our English ritual, especially in London, a token of the approach of our second childhood, I wonder ? As we strolled hack to my lodging, old Joe told me of one or two * potlashes ' in which he had assisted in old days ; and amongst quaint doings of which he told, one pretty custom has fixed itself in my memory. When the last night of the revels had come, and the wild dancers had worn them- selves out with their efforts — when the grey of morning was in the skies, and the emhers of the fires were dying out and growing dim, a young Indian girl-child, stationed on the roof ahove the dancers, hent forward and reached out towards them with little arms through a breach in the roof. As they caught sight of her, with wild yells they leapt up towards her ; with the energy of the last flames of the dying fire, chiefs and saiwashes frantically il|l 94 BRITISH COLUMBIA. competed to reach the little arms extended from above. But the roof was too high, the beckoning arms too far ; the dancers' energies had already been spent in the revels, and they sank back tired with futile effort ; the arms were withdrawn i the last flame dropped back into the dead embers ; unbroken darkness and weariness leraained. The time was not yet, and the hope of their tribe still un- revealed. The next day I spent in buying camp neces- saries and procuring a canoe for my Indian and myself. All day long Joe's store was full of Indian purchasers, bartering deer-skins for calico and tobacco. Joe is one of the last of the fur-traders in this part of the world ; and though he buys skins cheaply enough, he complains that the trade pays him very poorly, the number of skins brought in by the natives being so small. This is not because the beasts of the forest are less numerous than they were, but simply that high wages for fishing, lum- bering, and mining have put the Indians out of A CRUISE IN A FOG. 95 conceit with the less remunerative and harder life of the hunter. Six years ago Comox Indians would work for 2s. a-day, or less ; now they wm't always work for 12s. The half-bred Iroquois en- gaged by me as gillie was wo.Lmg lor 2 dols. 50 cents per diem on the w)\arf when I engaged him, and he subsequently assured me that he had at times earned double that in the lumbering-camps. True, he was an excep- tionally good man with his axe ; but any man, however poor a creature he may be, can earn his 1 dol. 50 cents per diem. The Indians' great harvest-time is during the sealing season, which lasts for about six weeks or two months. The seal, of course, is the valuable fur-seal; and all the best men of the island are at work during that six weeks in their canoes on the west coast. In 1882, Eodello assured me that, being in Victoria when the Indians returned from the sealing, he saw two of them spend at one store upwards of 900 dols. * inside of no time,' \i wmmmm wmmmm. H 96 BRITISH COLUMBIA. I'' li as he expressed it ; while the whole town was invaded by the redskins dressed in their best^ driving about the main streets in hired car- riages, singing and making quite a grand demonstration. The trade-price for a seal-skin from the hunter is 4dols. ; and as some of them kill as many as ten seals a day, it is easy to see that their profits must be enormous. The specimens of the redmen which I saw at Joe's store were dressed, both men and women, in semi-European garb — rough flannel shirts and canvas trousers put on loosely, with a dirty towel, coloured woollen scarf, or bril- liant bandanna round his lank black hair, forming the costume of the filthy * saiwash ' (man) ; while a gaudy chintz dress, opened to show some appalling linen on the chest, and long dishevelled tresses, uncovered and uncon- fined, completed the attractions of his filthier spouse. All spoke Chinook, a mongrel lan- guage, formerly introduced by the Hudson Bay traders, compounded of EngHsh and French grafted on some Indian stock. wmmmn^ PPW«FWWWW" A CRUISE IN A FOG. 97 The red men of British Columbia seem to be thoroughly well treated, are very quiet and harmless, and put the greatest confidence in the law, which protects them in their rights as thoroughly as it does white men. Indeed some of the settlers seem to think that Indian reservations are only too well protected, since much of the small area of good agricultural land in Vancouver is reserved to the Indians, who, being a race of idlers and of fishers, make no use of the valuable land, which they prevent others utilizing. On the second night of my stay at Comox, Joe and I went up again to the ranche, hoping to see something of the dances of the potlash. But there was some hitch in the proceedings, and the opening dance had been postponed till the next day. Meanwhile the hosts and guests were ar- ranged against each other in a grand gamble, and this was how they did it. Last night's boards now lay across the knees of the rival ranks squatting on opposite sides of the big fire. ' The same incessant thumping which 7 !:'i 98 BRITISH COLUMBIA. 11 i V * had deafened us last night was being indulged in with renewed vigour on the second occa- sion; while two men of one side, holding wooden dice in either hand, passed and re- passed them across and across their chestiL^ and from hand to hand with such enthusiastic vigour that the perspiration streamed down their faces, while they and all their sides chaunted in time to the dice-holder's hands with a nervous energy that seemed dangerous. All this while the other party kept their eyes intently fixed on the dice, until one of the watchers thought he had discovered the where- abouts of the marked die, whereupon he arrested the shuffler's hands by a silent sign, and if successful took from the shuffler's side a small bundle of faggots used as counters, or in case of failure paid the same over to him. Until a correct guess had been made the original shufflers stuck to the dice ; but as soon as the marked die was discovered the other side became shufflers. I smoked a couple of pipes whilst watching L' mmm A CRUISE IN A FOG. 99 m this game, and then, having emptied my pouch and exhausted my patience, I left and saw no more of the Comox potlash. A curious kind of rattle is used by these Vancouver Indians, to mark the time in the potlash dances ; it is the property only of a great chief, and is used by him only on these state occasions. It seems a quaint idea that the host Should himself act as Master of Ceremonies and band at one and the same time. The carvings on these rattles are believed to represent a concise history of the tribe to which the Chief belongs, and the medicine-men of the tribe are able to decipher their meanings. i ^ g 7—2 V. 'paddling oue own canoe.* It was nine before I could get my Indian and his canoe down to the Comox wharf, in spite of all my early rising. But the day spent in waiting had won some reward, for the fog which had wrapped the whole land so long was now rapidly breaking up, and giving us glimpses of the outside world and our long- lost friend the sun. Many a time before I have started on a shooting expedition with less than a quarter of the luxuries which I had gathered round me on this occasion ; but then never before had I been in a land where all the ways are water-ways, and the con- veyances canoes, untiring and up to any weight. I' f^ ■PPIW mrngmmmmmm ^wppwp ^mm^^immm mmmm l> 'PADDLING OUR OWN CANOE: ioi Our canoe lay oflf the wharf — a long, roomy boat, large enough for twelve men, and once, I believe, the property of Sir Thomas Hesketh. It was just as well, I thought, to have a big canoe, as I intended to make rather an extended cruise, and wanted something stable enough to carry sail in a fair wind. My Indian was a fairly civilized half-breed — ^that is, half Iroquois and half coast Indian — who spoke excellent English and used an axe to perfection. If anyone should wish to shoot or fish where I shot and fished, they will be well advised to take Louis with them. When we had carried down flour and frying-panB, pots and kettles, axes and bedding, and all the other etcetera of camp-life, I suggested to my man that his squaw, who had brought the canoe round from the ranche, had better step out and say good-bye, as it was time to start. To my horror I found she was to go with us, and take a big dog with her to take care of her. Under any other circumstances I should have I iW.iL)»iLH|.F"i»ll — KlWJW mm^*-'t!fff1t mnflHfmmn'mim^mmmn I02 BRITISH COLUMBIA. I ; \ \ i ; t ( ; been resolnte in my objections to this course of action, but what could I do ? Louis was the only Indian who could be lured from the pleasures of the potlash. For all one knew, the potlash might go on until Christmas, and as he was but newly betrothed and anxious to marry the woman, nothing would persuade my henchman to leave her behind to be tempted by his companions and rivals during this season of Indian carnival. Poor fellow ! He had been married once or twice already (he was only twenty-six when he told the story), and betrothed very much oftener; but, as he remarked with a mournful shake of his head, a man who had his bread to earn could not always have his eye on a young "woman, and a wife would not be tied up like a dog to a tree, so they all went wrong. However, if h3 had not made a home for himself yet, he had made something out of each matrimonial venture ; as, though on entering into the bonds of betrothal or y 1 1 PADDLING OUR OWN CAN OE? 103 \ matrimony he had been obliged to deposit some marriage-gift with his charmer's father, he, on the other hand, got his own again with very considerable interest on the dissolution of the marriage-tie. In talking over camp-life in the West, my acquaintances had always insisted that the acme of camp-comfort could only be attained by taking to yourself a tawny helpmate of the weaker sex, whose willing work for her white lord would more than compensate for the absence of all the host of home servants. Alas ! this, I fear, is only another delusion. Louis's wife, at any rate, did nothing but eat and make herself a nuisance by splashing water at her spouse in her few waking moments with a spare paddle. She couldn't cook — at least, she never tried to ; she never washed even her own person ; she could not paddle ; and when, weary with a hard day's work, we landed to make camp, she jiist squatted on her haunches and watched us, or played with the dog. I don't think I ever I liJl m '^m ■■•1 I04 BRITISH COLUMBIA. 1. 1 ; ii grew to hate anyone as I did that dirty female bundle of rags and hnmanity. As I was anxious to make the journey to Salmon river in as short a time as possible, I suggested to Louis that if he would teach me, I would learn to paddle, and assist him as much as possible; and to this end I began digging away merrily at the quiet water. Canoes, especially big ones with few paddlers, do not fly through the water in real life ; on the contrary, with the stream against you, it seems to take an endless time to round any given promontory, and the promontory on which I had fixed as the end of my first essay in paddling took about half an hour to reach. Proud of my success, I indulged in an easy and lit a pipe. To my horror Louis did the same, and in about an hour I awoke to the certainty that as long as I paddled Louis might be expected to do the same ; but when I stopped, the canoe did. « Cape Mudge was said to be a day's paddle from Comox, and Salmon river a day from IH i 'PADDLING OUR OWN CANOE: 105 Cape Mudge ; and so they are if you have a good wind all the way, which of coarse we had not. The fog, which was now leaving us, seemed to have tamed into rain, and pattered drearily on the water all day; bat a wet shirt matters little if the arms inside it are hard at work the while. On the first head- land which we rounded waa an Indian grave- yard, full of hideous wooden gods or devils, standing guard over the buried chiefs. Eougher workmanship than they displayed is rarely seen, but in the mist and rain they were gloomily effective. Except for the pleasure that one always gets out of real hard work, that first day fr(5m Comox was not a very cheery one. No shores visible for the most part, and no life moving near us except the gulls sitting in rows by the edge of the graveyard, or a ghostly-looking loon exaggerated by the mist. Once a seal took it into his head to follow us, but he was not an unsophisticated beast by any means, and refused to give us a fair chance at his Il '%. :l m ■m w \ \ u • i xo6 BRITISH COLUMBIA. round shiny head with our rifles. The liveliest things were the salmon, whose silvery forms leapt incessantly round the canoe, taking three or four springs into the air and then disappearing. As evening drew in, supper hegan to be talked about ; and as we had trusted to fish for food, it became necessary to set about catch- ing our salmon. Wherever a stream ran out of the maple v/oods, that fringed the shore with a density of forest growth that appeared to deny ingress to the interior, there the salmon were thickest, struggling desperately to get up into the fresh water. On the shallow, with a torch and a spear, I fancy I could soon have procured my fish; but we had no torch, and so we had to content our- selves with a spoon-bait attached to a cable that, in an angler's hands, would have sufficed to hold a whale. For some time the spoon revolved fruit- lessly in our wake, until I began to despair of our supper ; but a furious tug gave a brighter 'PADDLING OVR OWN CANOE.' 107 turn to my thoughts, and I began gleefully to play my first salmon. To my astonishment, the brute never showed above water once, but sailed backwards and forwards under the canoe with the sullen stubbornness of a big pike rather than the mad rush of the king of game fish. But sullen or not, the strain began to tell on him, and, trusting to my tackle, I drew him up towards the boat. Surely this was no salmon — this long, evil-looking fish writhing through the water, and followed in every turn by another the exact counterpart of himself. Louis laughed outright at my " 3e of disappointment, as I hoisted a very vigorous dog-fish on board, and sent him in again minus his liver and his life. The liver is kept by the natives for the sake of the oil they extract from it, which I am told does duty in England as * pure cod-liver oil.' Three or four more dog-fish were caught thus, accompanied in almost every case by their friends and relatives to the very surface of the water, and then we reached Oyster m \ tt^^ ^v..,*-,i-«9Eew»!e io8 BRITISH COLUMBIA, U, I ' . V %■- I'. ^ n Bay, our first night's camping-ground, where an acre or so of black sand free from timber gave us room for an encampment near the edge of a river's mouth. There were lots of duck about, but I had brought no gun with me ; and though a flock of brent geese came in to the fresh water for the night, it was too dark to shoot them with a rifle. So smoked salmon with bread, and a cup of very brackish brandy and water, had to suffice us ; and as it was very late, we did not trouble to make a regular camp. If it had not been tha^ a species of sand- hopper, with the shape of a shrimp and the liveliness of a flea, was stirred into unusual activity by our fires, I should have been well content with my flour-bag for a pillow and the sail for an awning. But this was our first and last experience of short commons on the coast of Vancouver, for soon after the geese of Oyster Bay had left for the open water, Louis and I had paddled away with our little wooden shovels into waters alive with H 'PADDLING OUR OWN CANOE: 109 salmon. It seemed a sin to kill such glorious fish with such coarse tackle, hut I had only that or a trout-cast; and, as most men know, the salmon of these waters are so far hehind the times that they do not appreciate the beauties of a fly. Bound Cape Mudge especially, we had excellent spo^ j, though the Falmon were most of them small, from eight to fourteen pounds being about their ordinary weight. Towards midday we reached the Cape, but here the current was so strong that we were obliged to land and await the turn of the tide, having already lost two of our four spoons in big fish. "Where we landed, part of fi tribe of Indians were busy at the dog-fishery, and for a mile before we reached their canoes the water was white with the upturned bellies of their liverless victims. Five or six ca* oes had just come in when we arrived, full to the brim with dog-fish. On the shore, squaws and old men were busy extracting the livers and storing them in m 1':i If 'ij '. / : ( It I 4\ III ( I I r no BRITISH COLUMBIA. buckets, tossing back the bodies into the water as they finished cleaning them. The way the Indians catch the dog-fish is by spearing the fish as they sail about near the surface. Near the encampment we passed a second kind of graveyard, very different from that at Comox. At Mudge the graves were made in the form of lean-to huts of planks covered with white linen, with here and there an idol set up as sentinel of the cemetery. Wherever the Mudge Indians had been located along the shore, piles of clam-shells were heaped up, and other piles of echidna (I think English country-folk call them sea-eggs), some like those of England in size, but covered with grass-green spikes, and others larger than a man's two fists, of a rich purple. The roof was off the ranche, and no one had lived in it for some time ; but * You may break, you may ruin the vase if you will, The scent of the roses will cling to it still :' and no matter how long a coast Indian has left his home, the foul smell of his 'PADDLING OUR OWN CANOE: iii hannts and the putrefying debris on his deserted floors bear witness to a filth and untidiness which none but a red-skin could live through. T thought Asiatics were dirty, but I had never realized what dirt might be until I saw a Vancouver Indian's ranche. At Mudge, an old acquaintance gladdened us by his return — the sun at last fairly van- quishing the fog and bringing out all the glories of golden forest, gleaming water and the flashing silver of leaping salmon, in such a way as almost to compensate for our en- forced delay. Towards two o'clock we paddled across from Cape Mudge to the mouth of Campbell river, in the wake of a very scantily clad old gentleman who was removing his house, roof and ' fixings ' and all, from the dog-fishery to the permanent camp. At Campbell river a tribe of Flat- heads is encamped, living for the most part on the swarming shoals of salmon which are per- petually trying to ascend the river. Here we found Charlie, my second Indian, who % E ■;!•;■ \ \'.. wm ^f ..tmim'm ■BW mmmm mm. ' I V i li '■ ■: I ' 112 BRITISH COLUMBIA. had just returned from a successful seal-hunt along the coast of Bute Inlet, having bagged ^'^^ seals (hair-seals, not fur-seals) in the week. If seal-hunting had been my object in cruising about the shores of Vancouver, I could have had no better man with me than CharUe ; but as a hunter on land he was abso- lutely useless, the fact being that these fishing Indians know nothing at all i.bout hunting, and are afraid of being lost in the wood like very children. Demons, they say, dwell in the lonely places, and the cry of certain birds (owls, I believe) will give them agonies of torror. Tnese Campbell river Indians were inclined to make extremely hard terms with me, having recently secured a caph-box from a steamer which was burnt somewhere near Campbell river, and so being very flush of money. I saw one fellow with a wide-awake hat full of coins, most of which bore the mark of fire upon them. An early camp, with a supper of grouse (killed with a rifle-ball) and salmon-steaks rr iw. nwuii.iiauii i 'PADDLING OUR OWN CANOE: 113 ended our second day, after I had put the men through a sort of camp-crill, erecting the tents, making beds, and cleaning fish and game in the most approved fashion. A le&s inquisitive set of savages I never saw than those amongst whom I was camping. In the Caucasus a babel of talk would have deafened me until I had turned in for the night, and a crowd of inquisitive friends hampered my movements. Here, dogs and Indians squatted silently in a circle for a short time watching the strangers, and then one by one disap- peared and went about their own business. A lazier life no men could lead than these fellows. Their ranche is built on a clear spot near the river's mouth, where drift-wood and fallen timber lies thick within a dozen paces of their doors. From this they chop abundant fuel ; the sea is full of food for them, and the least possible industry will secure them dog-fish oil or deer-skins enough to purchase blankets, 8 r r^ ill' m i I ■f II. If ii^ I I: I', 114 BRITISH COLUMBIA. the only other necessaries of their simple lives. Except for the fishing, I never saw an Indian man or- woman do a single stroke of honest work. Vancouver would be a splendid place for the British poaching rough; he could loaf and idle to his heart's content, beat his wife to death, or nearly so, if he had a mind to, and always have enough to eat. The only charm wanting would be, that as the game is free to all and no one keeps poultry, he could not conveniently commit theft. My friend Charlie, I subsequently discovered, had been indulging in wife-beating to such an extent that he was confined in prison (I think at Yale) ; but he broke that, as he did his wife's head, and is now in full enjoyment of his freedom. On Sunday, with the extra man and the cheering influence of sunlight, we made a good run and got to Salmon river early in the afternoon ; though, oddly enough, we saw no game on the way. ■T^W^^W^f^^F^PfWWf^^ 'PADDLING OUR OWN CANOE.' 115 ■ — ■ — ■' ..- — — ■ ■■ ....if-.i As a rule, in the early xnoming, my men told me, you could hardly escape seeing a deer or two along the shore in the little grassy patches that occur from time to time. Be- tween Campbell and Salmon rivers is an extremely beautiful and dangerous rapid, known as Seymour's Narrows, which is only navigable for small craft at slack-tide. A cluster of tiny islands, with bold lichen- covered walls of dark rock, press into the deep and dark waters of the narrows. A few pines, and the quaintly-twisted forms of tlie red- barked arbutus-trees, grow on these islands, and in their shelter ducks seem to have found their earthly paradise. Where the water runs darkest and deepest under the overhanging rocks, I got hold of something which nearly pulled me out of the canoe. I had the end of the line round my thigh, thinking there would be less chance of a breakage so than if the line was hitched on to *" e of the seats. Whatever the fish was which took my last 8—2 If 1, 'mmmmtm ■ii 0 ii6 BRITISH COLUMBIA. spoon, he very speedily ran out all my spare line, and snapped the strong twine as if it had been a single horsehair. Luckily we had already fish enough for a day or two, and before that time had expired we hoped for venison. Two unfortunate little racoons, who were sunning themselves on a log, roused the sporting instincts of my men, and a lively hunt ensued, the coons taking to the roots of some big trees, and refusing for a long time to be ejected. But the dog-fish were the features of that day's journey. They were simply in thou- sands. All over the still surface of the water we kept seeing what I mistook at first for flocks of birds, swimming rapidly about. A nearer approach showed these to be not flocks of birds, but of dog-fish, their tall dorsal fins projecting above the surface as they raced to and fro among the countless millions of herrings, with which the strait seemed full. Charlie amused himself by spearing the dog- ^'^■i J * PADDLING OUR OWN CANOE: 117 fish instead of paddling, and so clever was he in the use of his two-pronged stick (on which he did not take the trouble to mount the spear- heads), that he speared two fish at once with it, and shaking them off, secured another im- mediately. In fact, with this simple stick he could spear fish as fast as he could have strung beads. Whilst trying to bale out some herring with a landing-net, my arm being immersed to the shoulder, a cold body struck hard against my hand, causing me to withdraw it sharply. Putting my hand in a second time, I saw my enemy, a big dog-fish, turn over and come at me again ; but as this time Charlie was watching, the brute came off second best. The people of Victoria are not blind as to the enormous wealth of their waters, and a company was formed, I understand, for the purpose of expressing the oil from the herrings which teem here at certain seasons ; and not only do the fish supply oil, but their bodies i r ' ^ C-'l f t ; , ^/r ill r! 11 ^< ii8 BRITISH COLUMBIA. also, when properly dried, form an excellent substitute for guano. This business occupies a prominent place in the programme of that extraordinary craft, Spratfs Arh, a vessel built in such a way that while being in itself a complete cannery, it is able not only to accommodate its own employes^ but to cruise about from place to place, and enjoy the best part of the salmon-run on a dozen different stations. Nothing catches the eye more in canoeing up these fiords (and fiords they are in all but the richness of their forest-fringes) than the fields of enormous sea- wrack which, floating on the surface, show by the direction of their tresses which way the tide is setting. Nothing I ever saw seemed to me so sugges- tive of mermaids as the'^e long slender-bodied weeds, swaying their bodies in the transparent waves, their gleaming round heads in some cases almost as large as a cocoanut, and their streaming tresses from six to twelve feet long. * PADDLING OUR OWN CANOE: 119 The Indians declare that some of these sea- wrack stalks are 150 feet long, but I never saw any of that length myself. The thick ends of them are used by the natives to carry water in, and the whole stalk makes excellent and pliable water-pipes. Keeping close in to shore, so as to take advantage of the still shoal water, we could watch the varied life at the bottom of the strait. Star fish of several hues, and furnished with points varying from five to twenty-five, cover the sea-floor. I never heard that the almost omnivorous *• saiwash ' eats these, but Charlie's eye soon detected a far more loathly- looking creature, which was to him as green turtle fat to the epicure. A great pink squid, sprawling in happy ignorance, was what caused Charlie and Louis so mnch excitement ; and it took a quarter of an hour of severe prodding and lifting before the tenacious beast could be hauled, a bruised lump of jelly, oflf his rock into the bottom of the boat. In my anxiety to learn all things, I had intended to taste the ill 'I II '' '^^^. M ' 1* ); t!'. >' 5 i 1 20 BRITISH COLUMBIA, fish when cooked; but I was too late, un- fortunately, the greedy cooks having eaten every morsel of the squid before I got on the scene. There are very few white settlements be- tween Comox and Salmon river. I only remember noticing two or three, and these were, I fancy, only single families, and all on the Gomox side of Cape Mudge. As a matter of fact the coast of Vancouver's Island is too thickly timbered for farming, and the price of labour is so prohibitive that it does not pay to clear. About three o'clock, when our arms and backs were almost worn out with incessant toil at the paddles, we turned the comer of the island, and at the same time noticed the drifts of white mist high up amongst the pines, sailing our way. For the first time during onr four days' voyage we hoisted our sail, and revelled in the sensation of rapid motion to- wards the desired goal without any effort on our part. 'PADDLING OUR OWN CANOE: 121 The mouth of Salmon river is broad and shallow; the village, of three big barracks, lying some little distance up the left bank — enormous blazoned poles in front of each barrack. The river seemed full of the whitened bodies of dead and dying salmon — * humpies,' as my half-breed called them. The poor beasts, too weak to avoid the paddle, almost half- blind and stupid, are a pitiable sight, and a revolting one. I don't think the Indians eat them in this state, though of this I am not sure ; but at any rate Bruin does, and looks forward to the ' humpy season ' as his great annual fete. Oddly enough, dogs suffer tremendously here (at least they do in Washington Territory, and, I believe, here too) from what the people call * salmon sickness,' brought on by their first meal of this fish — whether the fish be in a healthy state or a * humpy.* If, however, they recover from their first sickness, they can eat salmon for the rest of their lives with impunity. '1% h K^ ; ' /I i. ".*• i! iti i rf( laa BRITISH COLUMBIA. As for Salmon Biver Settlement, it con- sisted, when we arrived on the scene, of two old men with ragged shirts down to their waists, half a dozen hideous crones, and some few Indian brats of tender years. But it struck me that in all the ranches, children were comparatively scarce. For one thing only I bless the memory of Salmon Biver Banche — to wit, that we got rid there of Louis's wife and dog. It was still fairly early in the afternoon when we started up the river, and then the best part of my shooting trip began. The river was a perfect colour for fishing, and after clearing the ^mi r.pid the shallows under the drooping cedars were just within casting- distance on either side of the canoe. Of course I soon set aside the spoot-bait and rope- like line which we had been using, and put up a fly on a light trout-cast. Some old flies, used years ago in Norway, seiTed my turn ; but as the flsh seemed to prefer bright colours and only to take it en 'PADDLING OUR OWN CANOE: 125 the wet fly, I deeply regretted that I had not hronght a ' Francis Francis ' fly with me. I think that would suit the big sea-trout in Vancouver to a nicety. As it was, I had nothing to complain of; and before I had reached the top of the first big bend of the stream I had lifted a brace and a half of beautiful fish, from 2 to 4 lb. weight, into the bottom of the canoe. The colours of these beauties were less warm than those of our river-trout, but their silver and green sides of glistening dappled malachite were superb. As for the scenery in this angler's para- dise, I can only say it is such as Izaak Walton might have seen in visions, had he been an opium-eater. Long bright reaches of shallow water, with gleaming gravel bottom, bounded by cool dark shadows under overhanging woods, whose foliage was now golden with the dying glories of the maple-leaf, now tender russet-red and soft dark green evenly mixed on the boughs ! i I '.J fii /I I V I'M •ill t i 124 BRITISH COLUMBIA. of the gigantic cedar. Then the stream twisted, and there were rapids, with dark pools here and there under a boldly-pro- jecting rock, or behind the submerged root of some fallen forest giant, in which far down we could see the salmon lying : too far down, worse luck ! for our spears to reach them. Here and there on a blasted pine, or high up on some bare piece of rock, we saw the great bald-headed eagle, sated probably with salmon, or if not that, so bold that one big fellow let me step out of my rocking canoe knee-deep into the stream, and take a deliberate shot at him with my rifle. All the birds seemed tame and careless of man's approach. A couple of brent geese waddled quietly out on to a spit of land not a hundred yards ahead of us, and sat staring until my rifle turned one of them over. What with these and a wild duck, my rifle did the work of a fowling-piece that day. ■m rT^w^nmm&tm^rwm^itn , ^iM^n^^rrwr^^^m^mmf iii ji t^-'i'^fmmm^fFmtm'v^^' i ^f.' t-J 126 BRITISH COLUMBIA. is I \i % !^. «awbill8 (mergansers) ; but ducks we saw none. From time to time we landed, but the whole of that first day we came across no game-tracks whatever, and it was with a feeling of some disappointment that I landed on a low sand-spit, and prepared to camp. But boiled salmon-trout, with whisky and water, in an earthly paradise, would dissipate most men's blues ; and as I lay on my back ar^d smoked, I wondered why men who could afford moors in Scotland did not sometimes equip a perfect canoe to carry themselves, camp-outfit, and, if they liked, their wives, and enjoy for a month or two the perfection of foreign trout-fishing, and the most lovely river scenery in the world. I say * foreign trout-fishing* advisedly ; for to anyone who really loves the angle, I can't help thinking that English fishing ^ . a well-fished stream, where trout are foe- men worthy of your steel, is far ar.d awav t !ie best. m :fS. I .0 w PADDLING OUR OWN CANOE: 127 The second day up the river brought us in view of game-tracks. Here and there were patches of sand, or a clump of cotton- wood trees, with soft soil round them, in which we detected the tracks of a bear or two and some wolves, and at last, to my intense de- light, the great hoof-marks of an elk. Oh yes ! I know, Mr. Critic, I ought to call the beast a wapiti ; but as no one jails it anything but elk out in the land in which it lives, I shall, with your leave, call it elk too. To my surprise I was spared the only thing I had looked forward to with dread during my cruise ; for not one single mosquito, gnat, or other obnoxious ins3ct, buzzed its war-note in my ear on Salmon river. The only diffi- culty we encountered on our way up stream was that of getting through the occasional barrier of fallen pine-trees which from time to time blocked up the river. When we met these things Louis and his axe came to our rescue, and hewed a way through the solid '%4 m ' II m m VJM*»— \^ MB ''1' ' ■V, U I ; If ■I /i ^/' 1^ i fl I ' 8 128 BRITISH COLUMBIA. timber ; but it was a long job, and weary waste of time. Towai / '\q evening of the second day we reachea iie mouth of a small tributary stream of Salmon river; and here, as the stream was small, we determined to cache our canoe and start thence inland next morning, with light packs, in hope of finding a prairie country and elk somewhere near. As it was still early, I left the men to cache the canoe and make the camp, while I strolled oflf into the woods, which crowded down dim and dense to the very edge of the stream. So thick are these Vancouver forests that in places a man can hardly pass through them, and the perpetual recurrence of tracts of fallen timber make the going difficult and risky; for what at first appears the ordinary bottom of the forest, turns out as you tread on it to be a mere platform of logs, so overgrown and interlaced that you may be tumbling from three to ten feet through them with si broken wmmmmim 'PADDLING OUR OWN CANOE: 129 leg almost before you realize what you have been walking on. Now and again the broad stem of a fallen giant gives you 1 60 feet of splendid wooden road; but arrived at the end you find you have been gradually ascending, and now stand on what the Americans would call a 'jump oflf,' with a mass of brush below you, hiding, in all probability, a collection of logs, or a pitfall which, coming at the bottom of such a jump, would end your ra able for that day. The chief part of the brush is currant-bush, with a berry having the flavour of black- currant wood or leaves, and so covered with bloom as to appear grey. Under foot the large maiden-hair fern, which is the chief ornament of so many English greenhouses, grows in a cup-shape to your knees. An- other fern of the polypod family shares the country with the maiden-hair, and to- gether, if you can get them dry, they form no bad addenda to the young cedar twigs of 9 ' !, li; 'II "m >'\, 130 BRITISH COLUMBIA. h 0 1 - o if' '' ft mi ji » If i ■. '■' i) " ■ '' \ which wise men in Vancouver's Island make their camp mattress. I had not gone far from my men when Charlie came blmidering after me, making noise enough to alarm the whole country-side, and begging me to come quickly and quietly back with him, as wolves had been seen crossing the river just below our encampment. Wading up the tributary thigh-deep, I reached a little island from which the opposite bank of the main stream was visible, where sat, not a wolf surely, but a splendid black colley dog. So fidl was I of this idea that it took half a minute to convince me that coUeys were not likely to be roaming about Van- couver's Island, after which I took my shot, the first at big game since I had been in America. The result was ludicrous. The old wolf sat up and passed his paws over his ears and eyes as if washing Ins face, shook his head and bolted, while I performed an elaborate somersault backwards into the water, and though my shoulder was a good deal hurt. ■MP5iiiiS#r'''»*^~ '* •" • MMi -'■'^"'"^■"^ 'PADDLING OUR OWN CANOE: 131 it was as nothing to my wounded feelings. I never knew my gunmaker send me a bad cartridge before, but if there were not two charges of powder in that one I am a Dutchman. ) '% I 'h)1 if 1 t ''! 9—2 mmmmmmmmmm VI. * ON THE TBAIL OF THE WAPITI.* » Let me try to recall every incident of those two early October days last year, connected in my mind with the best beast that ever fell to my rifle. On Tuesday night, camped under one of the largest cedars I ever saw, with a sweet- smelling mattress of twigs from the boughs that made my canopy, I dozed away into dreamland, to the music of Salmon river and its vassal from Victoria Peak. Now and again the wolves woke the forest echoes with long-drawn howls, presumably of derision for the dufifer who had attempted to molest one of their race. The men were flitting about still when my IMM * ON THE TRAIL OF THE WAPITV 133 eyes closed, busy with a big baking; and when I woke again, just at dawn, they were afoot before me, and everything except my own tent was stowed away. In a big cup- board amongst the cedar-roots we stored our food, and walled it in with boulders to protect it from bears or wolves. The canoe we left just as it was. No one was likely to meddle with that at the head of Salmon river. The sail we packed on Charlie's back with the bread, and so, with about 100 lb. of impedi- menta distributed pretty evenly amongst us, we turned our backs on luxury and set ofif to find the prairies which men say exist near Victoria Peak. How any beast of the forest even finds his way in these regions of dense vegetation is a marvel to me. As for us men, we could mark now and again a higher peak than the rest, back in the interior ; and towards this by sadly circuitous routes we steered, through such a tangled mesh of bush and fern and towering trees as surely exists nowhere else on earth. Tracks of game !>fl M>J! 134 BRITISH COLUMBIA. I i'i i It h if \ •I 1 ). -I I li il \ were few and not of recent date nntil we stmck the river, and here we came upon a fairly fresh elk-track. Gradually we seemed to get into the heaten roads of the game, and at last we were fairly launched on the trail of a big beast who had passed by not two days before us. Wherever the elk-track led we followed, and no man could have chosen more carefully the pleasant places and easy going than did our four-footed road-maker. Unfortunately he seemed to have a predilection for water, and fifty times a day, I should think, he crossed and recrossed the stream. Moccasins are splendid things for walking in on dry land, but anything more treacherous than a wet moccasin on stepping-stones the ingenuity of ill-luck has not devised. With soaking jacket and aching bones, I meditated on these things ; but as the trail grew fresher our pace quickened, and little miseries were forgotten. Towards afternoon the trail turned boldly up the side of the ' ON THE TRAIL OF THE WAPITI: 135 ridge, always going through thick brush, of course, but now adding a deep black bog underfoot to the ordinary difficulties of our way. Heavy packs, a bog knee-deep, and a road that seemed steep as a back staircase, are trials ; and we could not forget that we had only dry bread and smoked salmon for dinner, while grouse, which we dare not shoot, sat stolidly staring at us every few yards. But things soon mended, and on the top of the ridge we came upon a very paradise for game. Underfoot the moss was firm, and here and there was a little rough grass ; bilberry- bushes, dwarfed and scanty, were the only scrub, and the noble pines stood fairly vvide apart. Everywhere were game-tracks, and right across the track lay a broad high-road worn in the moss by generations of elk. There was no doubt now that we had struck the direct road from Salmon river to the prairies of the interior. Though it was early ■'0 ; r iili ilvl Ami m '"fid it 136 BRITISH COLUMBIA, *s( il^ J'! n in October, the natives swore the elk had not begun to whistle yet ; but as these Indians of Vancouver are biit indifferent sportsmen, I should think thoy were wrong — the reason that we never heard any whistling being rather that the season was over than that it had not yet commenced. • Evening closed in on us that night in an awkward place high up above the stream, with an horizon before us still composed of the wooded hills through which the river wound ; but when we started again next morn- ing we thought a clearer light shone through the trees at the end of the next long gully, as if when we had found our way through them we should come out into the promised land of plains in which the wapiti live secure. But the end of the valley came and others followed, and still the woods grew no thinner, and no fresh point of vantage afforded us a view of a new class of country. The Indians were growing terribly sick of our long tramp and the absence of game, and f^l * ON THE TRAIL OF THE IVAPITi: 137 though I persisted in going forward they un- fortunately succeeded in persuading me to leave the trail, and, by following the river-bed, pick it up again, half a mile farther on. Thus we saved a long roundabout journey through the brush, and though we had to wade most of the way by tLe river, these amphibious redskins rather enjoyed it. In my own mind I knew I was doing wrong, as the tracks seemed hardly an hour old, but constant disappointment had shaken my faith. Of course I was punished. When we re- gained the trail, even the Indians looked blank. Not only had our elk not gone out, but another had come in. There seemed to be no breath of wind either way, so we unwisely followed the new beast back along the trail, and in about half an hour came on what might have been the luckiest spot, to me of all the lands I have shot over. In amongst the cedars was a clearing of nature's contriving, some half an acre square, and here the monarchs of Vancouver's Island 't M \ ^ !■ I I I 'i 1 ;i ■J: rl ' 138 BRITISH COLUMBIA. had met. Eight and left, torn tarf and broken bougbs showed where the battle had raged ; and at the point where the rivals had shocked together timeB and again, the ground was furrowed as if the ploughers had ploughed it. But it was only a battlefield that I looked on. The combatants had gone. One, the bigger beast, had couched not very far from the field which, I presume, he had won ; but, getting our wind, had gone back towards our camp. The other had gone away by a side-trail towards Victoria Peak — that is, towards the interior of the island. I would fain have fol- lowed the biggest tracks, but as the wind was against us, and the wapiti had already heard or winded us, I gave up the idea ; atid now, disgusted with those who had hitherto advised me wrong, I handed part of my pack to the Indians, told them to 'keep back some way behind me, and took up the running on my own responsibility. To cut a long s^orj' short, the beast seemed always clos'^ to ua, sometimes leaving a track * ON THE TRAIL OF THE WAPITI: 139 still wet on the river sand, at others a lair still warm in the fern. The wooded hills went on, and no open lands occurred, nor any easy of clearing or fit for farming. Once or twice we came to what Louis called a prairie, but it was nothing but a morass covered with marsh plants with gigantic leaves, and full of deep holes and treacherous bogs. The largest of these morasses was not more than a few acres in extent, and, oddly enough, though bears should have been there amongst the berries, not a head of game save grouse did we see day after day. In summer, when the salmon are thick in the rivers, and the banks are whitened with dead and dying * humpies,* bears swarm, I believe. But tloy are only black bears, and I did not fiieatly deplore their absence. On the second day of this new chase, about noon, we came to a place where, in a bed of black sand, many streams met, and oar stream's identit}) seemed lost. Here the sand was pawed up so freshly, tliat the water was ■ . , L' 1 1 : t i I li I! ^\ t ' (^ 140 BRITISH COLUMBIA. only just beginning to ooze into the hollows. In front lay in the river-bed a grove of cotton- wood, and the bush I think British Columbians call ' sal lal/ Here, then, my beast was lying, and I was inwardly wondering how I could best surround the patch with three, men and make sure of getting my shot, when a low whistle made me lift my eyes from the track to fix them on the fairest sight I ever saw. You know Landseer's great picture, reader, in which the royal hart has just risen from his mountain lair, and, with his royal head thrown back, is snuffing in health and life on the fresh breeze of morning. In just such a posture, almost broadside on, and looking steadily at me from the overhanging river- bank beyond the cotton-wood grove, stood what I verily believe should be called the king of beasts, if gallant mien and grand pro- portion entitle any beast to the name. One long look I allowed myself, but I am afraid that it was along my rifle-barrel ; for if I had seen that royal head only to lose it, I should ■.*ML, i*»W* *.«»«» ♦#.■*.*. . 'ON THE TRAIL OF THE WAPITi: 141 never have slept in peace again. Thanks be to St. Hubert, no buck-fever shook my hand and no nervous mist dimmed my eye ; but when the shot was fired, only a spasmodic shiver showed that my mark was not the mere statue of a stag. The Indians thought I had missed, of course, and I felt rather than saw that Charlie was going to shoot ; but I managed to keep steady and plant another ball on the elk's shoulder. This time the shock was sharper, and, not \ iug in a vital place, had no paralyzing effect ; so, after a preliminary stagger, the elk turned and crashed through the timber. I am not a good runner as a rule, but I should enter, I think, for a few races if I could always go as fast as I went across that river-bed — more shame to me; for I ought to have known, after that convulsive shiver, that I had no need to hurry or fear for the result. But, thank goodness, I have not grown out of all my boy's tricks yet, and the yell those Indians set up would have fired \ j; 1 I it It ; 'J ^(f. ) it i i 142 BRITISH COLUMBIA, calmer blood than mine. An elk looks better at rest than in motion, but I conld not watch the long, heavy stride far, for in two hun- dred yards my beast was down, and I felt the full joy of triumph. Like an idiot, I took his foreleg in my hands to try to turn hiin on to his back, that we might cut hip throat with greater ease. But- unluckily he was far from dead yet, and the way in which he laid me out on my back among those sal lal bushes a yard or two off from where he fell, will be the subject for many a laugh among Louis's friends in the future. Lucky for me that I pressed the great hoof tight against my chest as he drew me to him ; for if he had only got hitting-room, what was only an unpleasant push would have been a kick to let day- light in. As it was, I was only well shaken and laughed at, and my ardour a little cooled. When we had given the elk his couj) de grace, I took out my tape and measured him as well as I could as he lay on his side, and, making 1 ' ON THE TRAIL OF THE WAPITi: 143 all allowances, I should say he stood a clear sixteen hands and a little to spare at the shoulder when alive. His antlers were dyed with the sap of some tree against which he had been rubbing them — the rich red of the juniper bark— and were even, unbroken save in a slight degree in two places from his recent fight, numbered seventeen points all told, and girthed all but seven inches above the brow antler. For the rest of that day skinning and packing kept us busy, and when I saw the huge mass of magnificent meat which we must needs leave to t^e wolves, my heart (not much given, I fear, lo sentiment) smote me for the deed I had done, and I resolved to slay no more, but rest content with this one noble specimen of Cerviis Canadensis, That was a cold night we spent after the elk's death, though we carried our packs some distance on the back track to the most shel- tered nook we could find; and it was still night when we got into harness again and i. tl 144 BRITISH COLUMBIA. m ■ :> began the id ;rch home, not in such exuberant spirits, perhaps, as we ought to have been. An elk is a grand beast to slay, and no finer trophy can grace a sportsman's hall than the head of such a beast as I had slain ; but, brother sportsman, if you had to carry that head over your own shoulders all day through the thickest covert you ever saw, with pitfalls and fallen timber all round you, and ill- natured boughs that insisted on clinging to the branching antlers until they dragged you off your legs, do you think you would like it ? Poor Charlie had the head to carry, and though lazy as a negro, he is a very Samson when the work cannot be shirked. Neither Louis nor I could have done the day's work he did, and I shall never forget his look of perfect resignation when I found him tumbled off a log into a yawning gulf beneath, impaled amongst the antlers and timber in such a way that it took two of us five minutes to get him out. I felt that my own 70 lb. of pack was 5l ' ON THE TRAIL OF THE WAPITI: 145 a good deal more than I cared about long ere the evening. It was a quaint procession, the branching antlers on Charlie's shoulder going in front, over logs and bridges of fallen pines, diving now and again out of sight amongst the rank undergrowth, and reappearing knee-deep in the stream beyond. The forest silence in Vancouver's Island is absolutely unbroken by day, and that, together with the difficulty of seeing ahead and the choking density of undergrowth that seems to forbid all move- ment into or out of it, has a very depressing effect on the spirits. Up in our open tract of •forest things were a little brighter ; there was more room for the sun to shine, and it had just caught the white leaves of a cotton-wood below the cUff, and brought them out in bold contrast to the tresses of the hemlock and red-pine around. Amongst the red and green of the cedars a family of tits had assembled from goodness knows where, and were twit- tering noisily, as if they were in the very 10 . I! 1} \\ s\ , 'I I 146 BRITISH COLUMBIA, centre of the bird-world and had lots to talk about; a squirrel was chattering somewhere amongst the pines, and an old raven croaked enviously as he smelt our loads of venison. The song of the waters sounded clear and musical up there in the open forest ; the sun- light glanced back from rock and tree ; a blue bit of heaven peeped through the trees, and our spirits rose in spite of our weariness. But as soon as we passed out of this upland region, our feet sinking silently among soft pine-needles and rotten wood, into the forest below, life and light seemed lefk behind us, bivouacking with the sun on the hillside. Silence reigned supreme in the river-bottom, except for our anathemas, as we broke our shins over hidden logs, or involuntarily sat down on a plant between a cactus and a thistle, with which these woods abound. If a bough broke, all nature seemed listening in outraged surprise. A dozen times I thought Charlie would have thrown away my beautiful elk's head ; mmmm * OJ\r THE TRAIL OF THE WAPlTi: 147 but by frequent rests and incessant supplies of tobacco I just managed to keep lam going, until, after spending three hours within a mile of our camp, we sank down dead-beat along- side our canoe. That night we feasted and made merry over a supper of trout and elk brains, fried with our last onion, and washed down with good brandy-and-water ; and next morning saw us going gaily with the stream to the mouth of Salmon river, picking up a duck or two with Charlie's Winchester, and a good basket of trout with my rod, en route. I i 'Hi ■ 5 \ ; J i ill 10—2 ;« VII. 'the home op the rocky mountain goat.' Opposite Salmon Eiver lies Hardwicke Island; and if, reader, you will look at your map, you will see that the whole of the Strait hereabouts is full of islands and islets varying in size, but of a uniformly wooded and rugged character. Passing through these to the mainland, you come upon a coast deeply indented, on which mountains rise almost in a sheer line from the sea to an elevation of from 1,500 to 6,000 feet above the sea-level. So large are many of the inlets and such is the maze of islands, that it takes a good chart and a skilful navigator to find the way in these waters ; but we had a good chart, and Charlie knew the islands all as well as an angler knows each nook in his *l * THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN GOAT: 149 favourite stream. Sealing was Charlie's trade, and in the calm waters at the hack of some rock which caught the sun, our canoe seemed to move of its own free will, so noiseless and effortless was Charlie's method of paddling. Once or twice a sullen plunge would send a frown to the paddler's face, and in a couple of minutes' time a round glistening head would appear ahove the waters some 200 yards away, and silently stare at us with hig solemn eyes that, combined with the noiselessness of the apparition, gave a supernatural flavour to the whole adventure. Sometimes the mark seemed too small and too far away, and then, just paddling enough to keep our little craft moving, one of us would whistle softly. As often as not the seal became interested, and rose again and again nearer and nearer to the boat, lifting at last his great broad chest well out of the water as if to get a better view of his serenaders. Then the rifle rang out from the stem of the canoe ; silence gave place to hurry and noise ; the paddles went as fast as % m ■,'f»»it*fW.JJ ••»-..-■•> 150 BRITISH COLUMBIA, hands could use them — even the woman taking one for the moment. Clever as a cat, Charlie picks his way over ns, hardly altering the halance of the canoe as he goes, and never stopping our rowing for a moment. Easy all now! and the canoe glides up to the dark stain in the water, where, in a kind of crimson halo, the unfortunate seal is gradually sinking out of our reach. Once, twice, Charlie strikes with the long, light harpoon; and the second time the harhs go well home, and are left imbedded in our victim. After this we have only to tow him into a cove, if one is handy, or bring him on board ; but the result is not always as satisfactory as this. Often when the canoe reaches the place where the seal was, nothing but a reddening of the waters remains to show that he was hit, though you may be pretty sure that he is lying dead far below amongst the sea-wrack. Oftener still, the glistening head is an inch or two too low for the bullet, and the marksman has the pleasure of seeing his bullet skip idly tmmm * THE ROCKY MO UNTAIN GO A T: 151 away over the still waters. But if you miss one seal you have plenty more to shoot at, and it is capital rifle practice and no useless waste of life; for the last five seals that Charlie took back to Campbell river, fetched, I think he said, 4 to 5 dols. apiece. But though seal-shooting or salmon-fishing beguiled our way, it was not for either seal or salmon that we sought these solitudes. Here and there on the sides of the mountain islands, a patch of a dozen acres, or less, would be free from timber, the reason being, one almost thought, that the space of rock laid bare was too precipitous for even a pine to get a footing on. Here the white goat or mountain antelope is to be seen in the early morning, and again when the sun has lost some of his noonday power. In and out among the islands we paddled for the greater part of the day until we reached a promontory on the mainland, on which, my guide said, his father had recently killed a couple of the beasts we were in search of. n •i: :1 ■*•! »l i i ; 8 if 152 BRITISH COLUMBIA, If I do not call the promontory by name or define it too clearly, pardon me, brother sportsman, because I will confess to you that the mountain goat is nowhere quite as common as children in poor men's houses ; and though I should not mind directing any really good man to the hunting-grounds which I have discovered, I do not want, when I call at my old camping-ground next year, to find that Tom, Dick and Hany have been before me and frightened all the game out of the country. Far up in a deep indentation on the main coast we landed, and sent the squaw to look out for water — the only business, by the way, which she seemed to understand ; and then wo pitched our camp on ihe only available site, a kind of terraced rubbish-heap of clam-shells, echidna husks, and other refuse, amongst the roots of a big cedar. So dense was the gro'vvth of trees by the water's edge that, nasty though the clam -she? 1 heap appeared, we could find no better place ; and in truth, it ■Boaac ■MM mm y, ' Tir2£ ROCKY MOUNTAIN GOAT: 153 was the old camping-ground for ages of the fishing Indians of this district, and we owed our floor of refuse several feet thick to their filthy habit of leaving all odds and ends on the floor, rather than take the trouble of throwing them outside. Having removed a cartload or so of clam-shells, we beat down the rest into a solid floor, and camped. Alas! we little know how much our comfort for the next week would depend on that night's work. In the early morning we paddlea out from the shore, and there, high up on the bare place among the trees, were two white specks which, seen through my field-glass, proved to be a couple of goats at breakfast. At the distance from which we saw them they looked pure white, and far more solid and heavy in build than the ordinary goat ; in fact, then and since, they always suggested to my mind the idea not so much of a big goat as a miniature yak, or beast of some closely allied race. Carefully noting the position of the goats, and '■% »4 % I' ! I B 154 BRITISH COLUMBIA. trying to guess from the little mist-drifts how the wind would be in the upper stories of our mountain, we paddled back to camp, cooked a salmon-steak, and in twenty minutes were toiling up through the mountain forest. Until you get on to the actual rock on which the goats feed, there is no need of anything but a good wind and stout limbs for this kind of sport ; but I fancy there are places, where the rocks are bare and steep, that would try a good mountaineer: and after all, it matters little whether the fall be 100 feet or 1000, if only the point at which the faller alight be sufficiently hard. There is a bush which grows on all these mountains, a low thick shrub with oval glistening leaves and dry brittle branches. In an English shrubbery it might excite your admiration, but if you found that your only way to hard-earned game lay through a jungle of this noisy plant, you would pray never to see it again. The Indian made so much noise in traversing these jungles that my own ■pi "f ' THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN GO A T: 155 care in treading them was thrown away. But at last we gained a point at which a small moraine ran down the mountain-side, and along the edge of this we crept quietly enough. Looking down through the timber below, another eye caught mine, and my finger in- stinctively curled round the trigger. Broad- side on, with his head turned to me (passant regardant, I think heralds call the position), was the first Columbian deer I had seen ; not one of the poor Uttle black- tailed variety with small four or six point heads, but a big fellow with twelve points as regularly set above his forehead as nature could contrive them. He was a superb beast, and nothing could have saved him from my rifle, as he stood for three minutes not forty yards away ; but my desire to bag the goats prevailed, and with a sigh I let the tall beast go, feeling that unless the goats gave me a shot when I rounded the next bluflf, fortune would be more cruel than such self-denial merited. And of course — the goats "■ y- ■ m f 156 BRITISH COLUMBIA. were not there. Either the sun had got too high, or the stag had gone round and reported danger near, or the wily hrutes had got our wind ; in any case, they had departed, and a long day spent on the hill-tops, only resulted in the discovery of half a dozen of their lairs in the thick of the rattling shrub to which I have already alluded. Both deer and goats seem to couch in these thickets, so that it is a hard matter to get near either, unless they are up and about on their feeding-grounds. On our way down, a grouse or two came and looked at us from the end of some fallen log, and as we were then far away from the peaks we risked a shot or two ; and with a grouse and a handful of the long white hairs of the goat, we had to go back contented to camp. Alas I that night the mists swept up into every comer of our mountain fastness, and in the morning every peak was densely veiled, while torrents of rain made little cataracts where, before, was dry mountain- ' THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN GOAT: 157 side. No man could find his way in snch mists, so we had to bide at home, or, at the best, troll for salmon. For three weary days this went on, and day after day we spent shivering under our now sodden canvas, or busy on some engi- neering operation intended to divert the pool which had formed on the floor of our tent to the lower terrace where Charlie and Louis slept. The squaw had imported an umbrella into these wild regions, and though I laughed at her for bringing it at first, we were glad enough to have it during those days of con- stant rain, using it as an out-of-door shelter under which to change from dripping clothes to damp ones. I have had my share of wet camps, but I always count the days I spent in them as among the heaviest items in the bill of costs for sport enjoyed. The only happy things seemed the wild- fowl, and, safe in their waterproof suits, they had a merry time of it in our bay ; nor did we disturb them, for their antics afforded us «v i 'm \\ , 1 iS8 BRITISH COLUMBIA. ' our only entertainment, and there was no lack of food in camp. On the third day, towards evening, a little rift occurred in the clouds, and we were able to see the other side of our bay, some two hundred yards off ; so we manned the canoe and went in search of a certain Bed river of which Charlie knew, wherein were . ast numbers of salmon easy to spear, thanks to the small size of the pools and the difficulty experienced by fish in getting over the shallows from one pool to another. Partly, perhaps, it was the mist rolling back on to the shore and hanging in long plumes about the pines, partly, too, the evening stillness and density of the woods with which the glen was draped, wherefrom a whole colony of crows flew up as we entered, that made such an impression on our minds. In broad daylight on a bright day, the Bed river might have looked even cheerful ; but as we saw it, even Louis shuddered, and spoke of it as a place full of horrors and uncanny. The waters were a deep rust-red, as were all tmm I ' T^E ROCKY MOUNTAIN GOAT: 159 the banks and stones of the stream ; and after the first great pool only a tiny rill, that you might jnmp across or wade half-leg deep in, joined one pool to the next. Leaving our canoe we landed at once, and thick though the trees stood, never was a fairer way made for sportsmen than that we found ready to our feet. Through and through the forest, like the meshes of a spider's web, ran the net- work of Bruin's highway, while along the mossy bank his roads were beaten hard and flat as the trottoir of civilization. At every step you took, a well-cleaned salmon's back- bone, or a head rejected as uneatable, told why 73ruin had so infested this quiet glen. In 100 yards I counted the remains of as many or more fish, and from the tracks I should judge that bears of both sorts (black and grizzly) had been bivouacking by the Bed river during the salmon-run. I don't think Louis cared much for the neighbourhood when Charlie solemnly asouved him that grizzlies were more common than black bears ; and as J EMEmm i6o BRITISH COLUMBIA. for Charlie himself, he simply stuck as near the canoe as possible, and refused entirely to share my vigil with me. However, we found only two or three salmon left in the pools ; the run was over, and the fish had gone back to the sea, and Bruin to some other harvest of fish on another stream, or berries far back in the mountains. Some othei year, I hope, when my canoe steals up in the shadows of that dark river- mouth, I shall have the pleasure of finding ^ Mishka ' (as we call him lovingly in Bussia) busy at the fishing. Bed river glen would form a splendid scene for the death of the biggest grizzly on record; and, indeed, a friend of mine, who thinks the aid of fancy should be invoked, however sparingly, in works of travel, tried hard to persuade me to paint a bear picture for this admirable frame. I have never seen it discussed in the Fields but unless Solomon was speaking well within the mark when he said * All men are liars ' (at least in America), there must be some I « THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN GO A T: i6i I I brutes weighing from 1,800 to 2,000 lb. to be met with from time to time in Colorado and Southern California. A friend of mine, an Englishman, whose fancy is by no means given to wild flights, told me of one bear's track on which he and his Indian stumbled, into the single footprints of which he could put both his fair-sized feet, shod in big English shooting-boots, and still have an ample margin all round. If any man, whose experience of these things is greater than that of the majority of English sportsmen, should have any reliable statistics as to large bears and their weights, I dare say the Field would give him a hearing; and I know of a large number of men who would be exceedingly glad of any light thrown on the * big b'ar stories ' of the West. But to return to the goats. Bain and mist for three days had wearied us all of what I shall call ' Clam-shell Camp,' so that on the morning of the fourth day we paddled away to an island hard by the mainland, on 11 i M i6a BRITISH COLUMBIA. which, the summer before, a camp of hand- loggers had built a hut. Here we found shelter from the rain, a hearth on which we could keep a fire burning, and rough bunks in which to sleep secure from all chance of rheumatic fever. Bound the hut, imparting an unsavoury smell to the neighbourhood, were the relics of four carcases of the Van- couver deer; and opposite to our door we often got glimpses of seals, or, in a partial clearing of the skies, of a couple of goats on the coast-range of the other side. At length a fine day gladdened us; and as the goats could be clearly seen with my glasses, we rowed over to the mainland and tried a stalk. This time we had better luck, though a stifier climb, which brought us to within about four or fis^ hundred yards of our game. In a kind of bay of the mountain, timbered only on one side, we found ourselves amongst the last of the trees, looking across to where on the naked grey rocks a she-goat and a big kid were resting. Do what we * THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN GOAT: 163 would, we could get no nearer. All beyond US was bare as the palm of a man's hand, and in full view of the goats. All we could do was to wait for them to come nearer to us, or risk a shot at such a long range. The kid lay on a little shelf some forty yards above its dam, who, when we first saw her, was lazily cropping the wiry mountain grass. By-and-by the sun struck full on the rock, and then both lay down, the quaint old nanny rolling from time to time on her back in the sunshine, for all the world like a cat on a hearth-rug. After watching for half an hour the kid grew restless, and both mother and child began to trot away over the rocks to the other side of the peak. This would never do, so I took my chance and fired, the first shot hitting the old beast about right, as I thought, though too low down. For a while the broken ground hid her, and when I got a second chance she was farther off than ever, and though going lame, got over the ground at a very fair pace ; so 11—2 \ ■ *>\\ i64 BRITISH COLUMBIA. much so that my Indian did not think it worth while to follow her, and I gave up the chase, rather sick at the result, hut not much surprised, as at 500 yards an Express is not the right tool to rtse. On reaching camp, Louis, who had watched the whole proceeding, expressed his surprise in no measured terms, as he vowed that, having cleared the hrow, the old goat lay down, and not all the coaxings of the young one could get her to move again. But the evening was now upon us, and though he positively asserted that the last time he looked through the field- glass the goat was still there, a fog reaching almost to the edge of the sea hid everything from us, and made a second ascent in search of our dead impossible. For all I know, that fog is hanging round the peak still ; for though we waited two days, contenting ourselves with stalking small deer on our island and salmon-fishing, we never got a glimpse of that particular mountain again. For bachelor sportsmen a week more * THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN GOAT: 165 or less makes Bmoll dihcr jnce ; bat I knew I was already overdue at Victoria, so I left the log-hut and took the canoe down to N., an Indian ranche which stands at the foot of one of the best goat-hills of Bute Inlet. On our way thither we came across an enormous whale, which rose several times so close to us that it became apparent that any nearer acquaintance would be disastrous to our little craft ; so we had to send him a leaden message to quit, which he did with such a furious flourish of his tail that the ghastly pictures of whale-boats whirling bottom up- wards through space, which one occasionally meets with seemed no longer overdrawn to me. Two or three other whales were spout- ing in the strait, and before evening we met a small fleet of tall narrow black sails coming up towards us, and going in the direction taken by the whales. Now disappearing, now reappearing closer to us, we made these out to be four of the whale's worst enemies, fish of the 'tbresher' persuasion, and no W- l-N^ltttH'f^^Vt 166 BRITISH COLUMBIA. ;& 3 :i ni Hi doubt the poor old whale who got stung by our LuUet had an evil time of it later on when the threshers met him. The Indians declare that thtj thresher is a luost mortal enemy of the seal's. Be that »» it may, all the places where seals should have been were empty that evening. All the "'-vay up the little creek that loads to the Indian settlement of N., wo saw enormous quantities of mallard duck. On either side a low swampy fringe of land, intersected wi};h natural dykes, lies between the woods and tlje water. In these favourite feeding - haunts thousands of mallards were congregated, rising flight after flight as we T>assed along. Here, too, I saw several times boxes of wood fixed high up in the trees ; and on asking my men what they were, I found that it was the fashion here to bury the dead thus above ground instead of below it. One such box looked peculiarly ghastly, part of tlie woodwork having given way beneath years of rain and rot, so that some of its contents were visible. There was * THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN GOAT' 167 not much to see, but fancy filled in the picture only too readily. As the Indians wer > at their ranche and appeared friendly^ I made up my mind to endure the dirt for one night, and study the red man at home. The ranche in this in- stance was subdivided by tumble-down par- titions, ragged old blankets, or a dozen planks propped against the floor and a rafter. Privacy was not apparently the object of these partitions, but merely a desire to assign to each family its own domain. Rags and filth abounded round each fire, but food and warmth are all these creatures ask, and of that there seemed no stint. At the far end of the ranche a goodly crop of nettles had crept in and grown, and here I built my fire, hoping that my friends the nettles had some- what purged the ground from its impurities, or when trodden down would at least hide them from sight. I suppose man, even if he is only a fishing Indian of British Columbia, is a nobler crea- « ■ 1 68 BRITISH COLUMBIA. ture than the beast of the field ; but surely no unprejudiced judge, neither man nor beast, looking at the cleanliness of the cat and the filthiness of a Chinook, at the clean feeding of a horse and his generous instincts, and the garbage eaten by an Indian and the meanness of his ideas, would assign to the beast the lower place in the order of creation. My St. Bernard, Hubert, dirty feeder as he is, never had so foul a muzzle as the cleanest of these ignoble savages. When we arrived only a few rickety canoes lay at the landing-place, and a few old hags and naked, or nearly naked, old men shivered about the doorways ; but towards evening several canoes came slowly in from a distant mud-flat, where the squaws had been digging for clams. Pailful after pailful of these big cockles (for such they appear to the eye of the casual observer) was emptied on the floor, and on these and dried salmon the natives feasted Louis and Charlie. The Columbian Indians are like the cele- ' THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN GOAT: 169 brated old Irishwoman who ate whenever she was hungry and drank whenever she was drj\ They seem to have no regular hours for meals, or any intention of making a meal and getting it over at one sitting. No : their fashion is to plant a pile of clams by their fireside, and hang festoons of salmon in the smoke from their own hearth; and as they make mats or mend their lines, or doze away the idle hours, they help themselves now to a couple of clams, now to a strip of salmon, and throw their leavings to the crowd of dirty brats that sit and watch like dogs while their fathers and mothers feed. As everyone else was eating clams, I thought it best to try them for the sake of a new experience, if nothing else. The method is simple. Selecting a couple, you break one against the other as you would walnuts, and when the shell is broken, a long yellow stalk about as thick as your little finger offers you the first bite. It looked innocent enough and clean, so I took heart and made a bite at it. X I 11 'M: -1! lyo BRITISH COLUMBIA, ' i Even for experience' sake, reader, do not you be so rash. The yellow thing, tough and strong, was far from dead, and gave such a horrid writhe as my teeth touched it that it almost jumped out of my mouth. I dare say I looked white and sick, and certainly my hosts seemed to enjoy the joke amazingly; but nothing shall ever induce me to try live clams again. The Indians seem to think the more the clam kicks the better he tastes. Strung up beside the salmon are rows of things which look like dry mushrooms. These are smoked clams for winter use, and make, I believe, excellent soup — * skookum tumtum mucka- muck/ as my hostp called it in their queer jumble of diflTerent languages, which is called Chinook, was taught to these men by the Hudson Bay Company's Indians, and is now in common use among all the coast tribes. I did not mnch wonder at a * King George's- man ' (Chinook for * white man ') calling any Indian food * muckamuck/ It sounded right in my ears, at any rate. r X • THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN GOAT: 171 Most of the Chinook words are slightly mispronounced English or French words, but I fancy that the original groundwork of the language is an Indian dialect. Most of the names which the Chinook Indians use for things have, however, a very full share of descriptive power in them ; as, for instance, * fever,' which they call 'cole sick, waum sick,' and a seal, which is 'si wash cosho,' the man-pig. The names of birds seem borrowed from the notes of the birds themselves, at all events such as I heard used amongst the men I met. For instance, a mallard they called * kwoh-kweh ;' and, on referring to a Chinook dictionary, I find that this and the names of geose and swans, at any rate, are the proper Chinook terms, and not mere sounds used to convey a meaning to my ears, untaught in Indian language. Though the mist hung about lieavily when morning broke after our lirst niglit at N., there was a loophole in the clouds through which we could see the goat -pastures of our ■I % m • fl «H^ «W.r^rfi«iM«*r»i 17a BRITISH COLUMBIA. monntain, and theie, as usual, two white specks were moving slowly along the ledges. On these British Columbian hills there never seem to be more than a couple of goats to each distrii>t; and Charlie confirmed me in the impression which resulted from my own observations by saying that three was the greatest number he had ever seen together, and he had never seen two bands on one hill. They are quaint beasts to look at, with huge white beards and clumsy shaped bodies, though I never saw one with as marked a hump on the back as in the specimen photo- graphed by Mr. Baillio-Grohmaii. The horns are not unlike a chamois' — more polished and smoother, perhaps, and a trifle longer, with- out the sharp, backward, hook-like curve wliich cljaracterizes a chamois' horns. What adds greatly to the quaint aspect of a Rocky Mountain goat in that the legs have such long and thick cor.ts, that at a little distance the beast appears to be wearing loose white pantaloons. ■\m ' THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN GOAT: 173 At N. we were even less lucky than elsewhere, being unable to find the spot on which we hod marked the goats feeding, thanks to the density of my guides and the forest through which they misguided me. Worse still, we got into such a vile comer amongst the rocks, that, Charlie having dis- lodged a big boulder, we were only able to get down by leaping into the top of a pine- tree growing close up alongside the cliflf face. As my Indians were no tree- climbers, their descent was highly amusing to anyone who had already gained Una finna. A wolf- hunt on the mud-tlats opposite the ranche ended my ti'ay's sport in N. ; and when I got back to the camp I had the pleasure of hearing that no one but a certain bearded rascal among our hosts could find his way to the goat-pastures, and he would not go because Charlie had told him that he, Charlie, was alone to get any reward in case of a suc- cessful stalk. That night a breeze sprang up, which ! if r ;U • 174 BRITISH COLUMBIA, offered to save us many a weary hour of paddling if we availed ourselves of it; so that, after a hasty meal» we got into our canoe and paddled away for the strait. Once round the headland, our boat skimmed like a live thing before the breeze, and soon the dark woods and rippling water under our keel were forgotten, or only remembered in a dream. When I woke again, things had taken a different aspect upon them. The waters, that had hitherto looked as calm as if no wind could wake them, were breaking into our canoe. The woman had been ordered to lie down in the bottom of the craft and keep still, or run the risk of being thrown over- board. Charlie was scared and fidgety, and Louis, though thoroughly plucky and reHable, was a little nervous at having his wife on board, and evidently thought it was high time for me to wake up. I suppose, where wo were, the channel was nearly tliree miles across, and we were about midway between ♦ THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN GOAT: 175 the mainland and Thurlow's Island. Our sail was a simple square sheet, rigged up on a little mast in the bow of our canoe. Twice the mast broke, and the sail lay flapping over- board, and it seemed impossible to avoid a wreck. But Louis is a capital man in a canoe, and though all but swamped a dozen times, he managed at last to run us up against a single rock, he and I jumping into the water and towing our craft through the waves at the last, until we beached her high and dry to wait for morning. Luck had ordained that some driftwood should have been left upon our rock ; so, spite of wind and rain, we had a fire, and cooked a wild-duck and some dampers at 2 a.m., while the wind came tearing down through the narrows, driving mist and rain before, and making us thankful that we got to shore when we did. When the light came the wind fell, although enough remained to save us the labour of paddUng. About lunch-time we caught the * narrows ' at their quietest moment, and got ,H .J n ^ 176 BRITISH COLUMBIA. safely through, making Campbell river early in the day. Here we landed Charlie and paid him, an operation which gave me some idea of the comparative opulence of these fishing Indians. I wanted change for a hundred- dollar note, if possible, and though I never expected to get it at the Campbell river settlement, I asked Charlie to try to obtain it for me. To my astonishment, an old crone, his mother, at once produced a hatful of silver, enough to change several hundred-dollar nofces. Much of the money, I fear, had come from the cash-box abstracted from the steamer burnt in these waters not many months ago, but much, too, was, I dare say, fairly earned. At least half the coins had no marks of fire upon them, though others indisputably had. From Campbell river to Nanaimo, Louis and I had fair light breezes all the way, so that it mattered little that I had missed the Comox steamer. Day and night we glided along by the shores, catching salmon enough to feed us ; stopping sometimes at a settler's • THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN GOAT: 177 Hhanty, and sleeping by turn in the bottom of our cauoe. A fresh incident hud been added to our daily lives since we went up into those waters first ; for now every day we used to see schools of salmon — dog-salmon, Louis called them — not leaping now and again, as the ordi- nary salmon do, but crossing the straits in a series of leaps, travelling almost as much above water as under it. I shall not soon forget that last night on the straits by one of the many maple-bays. Now that my hunting trip was over, fog and mist and rain had left the skies as pure as crystal, and as bright. Day was dying out, and we were weary with a pleasant weariness that only comes after honest toil. The sun bad gone down, and streaks of pink cloud with faint blue edges, and long bands of light which were neitLet .: a-green nor gamboge, but something ofeati> 'lad yet not altogether either, lay across the horizon, and the whole sky seemed full of a soft light, soft as moonlight, but less cold. As the light went, deep glistening purple 12 ! v^/^,^^.o. o.v^ IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) // A ^ 1.0 I.I £f 1^ Ilia s lis lllllio 1.8 1.25 ||U ^ ^ 6" — ► Photographic Sciences Corporation 33 WEST MAIN STRHT WEBSTER, N.Y. MSSO (716) •72-4503 \ 4 ^ :\ \ ^\ •%^ A^ 5? ...W ".CJ^Sr&Ct -■^■"■■gJ^jy?^'CU«« tiitjm 178 BRITISH COLUMBIA. I shadows spread over the water, deepening as they neared the shores until the whole sea was in various shades of brighter or darker purple. On these bright dark waters the kitty-hoo-its (as Indians call the gulls) rocked their jauntily-cocked sterns, making them look like little caravels. Now and again a leaping salmon splashed the purple water into silvery drops, and then bit by bit the light faded, and dark woods and clear-cut islands stood out as if photographed against the clear night sky. VIII. ON BOISFOBT PRAIRIE. On my way back from Nanaimo to Victoria, fortmie threw in my way an opportunity which I had long been seeking. A Mr. C, an old Eton boy, was one of my fellow- passengers on the s.s. Hunt, and our ac- quaintance, formed on board, ripening into friendship at Victoria, resulted in my accept- ing his invitation to visit him at his farm in Lewis County, where I had a chance, not only of seeing what manner of life an English gentleman may make for himself on a Western farm, but also of judging for myself of the chances of a valley (the Chehailis Valley) of which I had heard continually on my way through from Portland to Vancouver. 12—2 ( =JWra»>-|,i,.,niWJi 7m I > I ); ^ 1 80 BRITISH COLUMBIA. The railway from Tacoma to Chehailis, or at least to Tenino, runs through a district in which level park-like lands and occasional treeless spaces afforded a pleasant contrast to the everlasting wooded hills of Vancouver's Island. It was an absolute relief to the eye to look upon a place where there was no timber. But though the land is level and fair to look upon, and the homesteads which dot it substantial and trim, the soil is so poor and stony that it is reported to carry barely one sheep to four acres, and to sell * improved ' at only 4 dols. per acre ; while land at Chehailis now sells at from 15 to 25 dols. an acre improved ; and railroad lands at from 4 to 5 dols. At Chehailis, a station on the N. P. Kail- way, where we alighted, there is a rapidly- growing town, which boasts a flour-mill, at which the settlers can realize from 90 cents to 1 dol. per bushel for their wheat; some good stores ; a capital forge ; and (not the least advantage), as far as I saw, only one ON BQISFORT PRAIRIE. i8i saloon or inn, at which we lunched. From Chehailis a corduroy road leads to Boisfort Prairie, on which my friend's farm lies, and thither we rattled away in a farm waggon as soon as lunch was over. When men speak of ' rattling away,' they generally mean you to understand that the pace at which they proceeded was consider- able. In this instance I mean to imply no such thing, and anyone who has tried a corduroy road about November, in a farm waggon, will understand that ii is possible to travel very slowly and yet * rattle away ' to your heart's content. If the settlers of Che- hailis Valley paid some road-rate and employed hired labour to make and mend their road, I fancy they would have a better one than that which they now keep up by contributions of their own time and personal labour. Bound Chehailis itself the homsteads are strikingly well built, and the farms almost English in their neatness and order ; and they deserve to be well looked to if local report be Hi JFTT-.y ~].WU-P«.T-.JWU-.'..JL!rf^''-*-'»'^ wmmmmm.. /I a i f'l i , i . I* 198 BRITISH COLUMBIA. unsteadily in my note-book at the time) 'white Chili and white Cook wheat.' Then, as an example of prairie-land, take Mr. C.'s farm at Boisfort, which has yielded for thirty years successive wheat- crops averaging twenty-five bushels to the acre. The cost of production of an acre of wheat on these farms is (taking everything into account) about 8 dols. The wheat ro produced can be sold at the farm on an average of years at about 80 to 85 cents per bushel. Labour, of course, is the most serious item on the expenditure side. Plough- men require 1 dol. per diem, the farmer finding a pair of horses and the plough, and board and lodging for the man. A man should plough two acres a day with a 14-inch plough. Seed is sown broadcast, two bushels to the acre. Drills cost so much, on account of high rate of freight and protective tariffs, that Pacific coast- farmers do not use them. Twine-binders ^.-i*»*.« .«-«T-*^,| ON BOISFORT PRAIRIE. 199 and threshing-machines come round in the season, these latter charging 5 cents a hushel for wheat and 3 cents for oats. I have before me now a complete account of the various farm operations in use among the Chehailis Yalley farmers, and the cost of each ; but probably I have already said more than enough on this topic to satisfy the ordinary reader. It only remains for me to add that, having bought a farm out here myself, my reader may put in what allow- ance of salt he likes with my rosy statements. I can only say that I have tried not to over- rate the advantages of what appeared to me a farmer's Eden. In addition to the wheat-crops of the valley, almost all the farms have a large quantity of hill-land unoccupied lying along- side of them, and here, thanks to the clearing eiBfected by the great fire, there is plenty of pea-vine and rye-grass, aflFording excellent pasture for sheep. The only drawback would be the difficulty of protecting your flocks from n 'il! I -ir.riV*'.'v- :^■•"% *i^.''*w.r.'.v;.ii; ■* ■■ 1 If ( I I 111 i I I ) 200 BRITISH COLUMBIA. beasts of prey. Were it not for this, these hills, with the river running so handily at their base, would make excellent sheep- runs. This charred forest is a risky place to walk or ride through when rain has made the tops of the trees heavy, and the wind is blowing strongly amongst them. Many a life has been lost in this way ; and I never enjoyed a ride less than I did one of about an hour's duration under such circuxj stances. Every other tree is a huge charred stump, burnt all but through somewhere near the middle of its hundred feet of height. Wherever your eye turns, gigantic logs seem poised only on the merest fragment of cinder, ready at any moment to yield to the persuasions of the wind. All along your path are fallen logs, and your guide from time to time ejaculates, * Ah, that's gone at last ; I thought it couldn't hold much longer.' Almost every five minutes, up while the wind lasts, you hear one of these Pi i I .wmfyiti|»iJ,»w,HiWfH"- <9iV BOISFORT PRAIRIE. 201 burnt giants come crashing down in the forest, sometimes close to you, sometimes far ofif, the thunder of his fall echoing through the woods like a salvo of artillery. H % If! m % IX. ' OLD VIRGINY.' Out West it is easier to get an invitation to stay with a dozen friends than to obtain leave to quit one of them. They welcome the coming, but are reluctant to speed the part- ing guest. However, I got back to Chehailis Station eventually, and once more set my head for home. Before leaving Lewis County a strange thing befell me, which, with luck, might have been a very thrilling adventure. Being delayed one Sunday night at a small public-house, the only one in the town, I found myself in the society of a couple of hurley pioneers, hankering like myself for a little whisky and water with their last pipe. Havinoj obtained some of the * cratur ' from 'OLD virginy: 203 mine host, I proceeded to entertain my fellow- lodgers, who declared themselves to be a couple of farmers from the East, prospecting for laud for themselves and others to take up next spring. From one thing to another the conversation shifted, until at last it got to 'road agents,' the highwaymen of the West. Onei of my companions had recently been in a coach ^vhich had been stopped, and the only man who contrived to keep his dollars in safety was a fellow who had them under the sole of his foot inside the stocking. He (the narrator) thought this a good plan — didn't I ? or did I know of any better way of eluding the wily * agent *? But as I never talk about my money to strangers, I was not to be * drawn,* though I never entei-tained the faintest doubt of the honesty of my questioner. Next day I had accomplished several hours, travelling by rail, and was on board the steamer for Poi land, when I ran up against the youngest of my two guests of the night before. ^ ii Jill iio4 BRITISH COLUMBIA. V w ' Hallo, sir !' I ejaculated ; * I thought you meant to stay at Chehailis for a week or two. If I had known you were going to Portland we might have gone together/ To my astonishment the man pretended not to know me ; seemed a good deal annoyed ; swore he never was at Chehailis, and all this in a queer falsetto voice, which, apart from features and dress, would have heen quite sufficient to convince me that I was not labouring under a mistake as to identity. Concluding that he knew his own business best, I took no more notice of my quondam friend, and lost sight of him, indeed, until I accidentally overheard him securing the next room to mine in my hotel at Portland. The next day, looking out from my bath to attract the attention of a nigger in the barber's shop beyond, I caught a glimpse of something that induced me to hold my tongue, and do without my towels for a few minutes. Since I had been in my bath my friend from Chehailis had entered the saloon, 'OLD virginy: 205 and as I looked I saw the barber remove, not only most of his luxuriant locks, but the whole of his beard, whiskers, and even his moustache. When my friend rose, smooth- faced and an altered man, I privily took a mental photograph of him in his new aspect, and, having dressed, bought a few revolver cartridges, and (much more sensible precaution) exchanged my cash for an order, payable only to me, on a New York bank. These pre- cautions I mentioned casually to my hotel servant and the innkeeper, from one of whom possibly the intelligence was conveyed to my follower, for he left the place next day. It may be I wronged the man by my suspicions, but at least this much may be gained from my experiences, that it is un- wise to confide in any stray acquaintance your own particular * tip * for keeping your money secure. As we swung round a curve on the N. P. Kailway, the morning after leaving Portland, we came upon the first accident which, I I .1 k ym 206 BRITISH COLUMBIA, •4 believe, has happened on this line. A herd of cows had come up under the cliff for shelter or to feed, at about the time that a luggage train was passing that way. The result was before us in the cold grey light of five a.m. Three or four dead cows, some with their heads or limbs knocked clean off ; some more only enough damaged to crawl away and die before they reached the broad waters of the Columbia, here running close against the line ; a locomotive engine standin^ on its head, and half a dozen cars in every position but their normal one; a hundred yards or so of line being taken up and relaid before we could proceed on our journey, by a gang of Chinese in loose blue garments and enormous wicker- work hats — such was the incident that afforded us food for conv(3rsation on the return journey. On the way out, a robbery committed in our Pullman car by a billiard-sharper from Wallula Junction broke the monotony of the travel. We collared that sharper though, 'OLD vjrginy: 207 and were able to restore the dollars to the unfortunate lady who had lost them. During the last part of the journey, from St. Paul to Portland, the line of the N. P. Railway passes through a dreary sandy country as trying to the travellers as the sands on the U. P. Eailway. Nothing can keep the alkaline sand out, so that for one day out of the six you feel * it were better not to be.' They tell me that from Umatilla to the Dalles, efforts are being made to bind down the drifting sand by the cultivation of willows, sunflowers, or anything else that will grow on it. No use appears to be made of the sunflowers. On the way back through Montana, I had the luck to travel with a whole crowd of American cattle-men and others coming into the towns for the winter from their frontier ranches. I never met a nicer set of fellows, full of good spirits and good stories, with kindly feelings for the old country, and a good word for the Britishers, * who were cutting it m If! f ' \\ 1^ r I \ .. 2o8 BRITISH COLUMBIA. pretty thick in Montany, and conld hold on to a bucking cayouse as well as ever a cowboy among 'em.' Most of these men, to my intense surprise, belonged to a class which I thought did not exist out of some few semi-civilized comers of England. They were downright Tories- thought most things would * grow ' better and stronger in the long-run for being let alone a bit. If a constitution was to grow up strong, it didn't want forcing with a lot of stump-spouter's rubbish ; and so on and so on. As for America, one of my Yankee Tories — a big brown-bearded fellow, with a large herd of his own not far from the Eose- bud river, and still under fifty years of age — seemed to doubt if things had much improved since the time when he remembered * men and women sitting round the open hearth at night, men pounding the com in hollow stumps, and women carding wool ;* the time when no one had an organ in the house, and every woman could make her own dresses and 'OLD virginy: 209 at ow me md was satisfied with three or four a year ; when men still reverenced something, believed in national heroes, looked up to local senators as .demigods, and to parsons as real friends and pastors. Now the senator is only a * leather- head ' who made his pile by such and such a swindle, and the parson is a ' gospel- shark ' or * devil-dodger.' The only reverence for anything, except the dollar, still left in America, was for women, and, thank God, that flourished finely still, especially on the frontier ; so that as long as that lasted, the cattle-rancher thought if they could only get rid of those * durned monoplies * he'd mebbe leave pretty nigh as good a world to his boys as the one he'd lived in. After reaching St. Paul, I turned aside and took a ticket for Washington in Virginia, my own specimen of the class of young gentle- man-emigrant, of which most English families nowadays have at least one sample, being located in the county of Amelia- in the * Mother State.' It was hardly pleasant hear- 14 I M ; ^K 210 BRITISH COLUMBIA, ii Mi 'll; ing for me, as I travelled from England to Yancouver's Island, but there was no escape from the oft repeated assertion that of all parts of America, Virginia was the worst for a youngster to settle in. Even Vir- ginians did not contradict the statement, and it was with no great expectations that I sought my brother's ranche. Washing- ton itself was so oppressively hot after the brisk air of the Indian summer in Montana, that I only stayed there for one restless night, passing through pretty, busy Eichmond next day. There was some electioneering business going on in Richmond when I passed through, and the town was teeming with energetic people ; so that after gazing in amazement at the enormous mules, which to me were the great feature of the town's street-life, I crept away to an oyster-shop and asked for two dozen natives. The people had no ' cherry- stone ' or * blue-points,' but they had several other varieties. Bo I ordered two dozen of v.n^^rmamKmv^sr^rauMffsimwriiii^S'xif:/ ) ff WT ' ■ 'OLD virginy: 2TI the best they had, and appealed to my friend for his order. * My dear fellow, you don't mean to say you are going to eat those all yourself V he asked. * Why, certainly ! aiid another dozen too, if the first instalment is satisfactory ; three dozen oysters won't hurt anyone,' I re- plied. * Well, I'll bet you don't half finish youi first order. Waiter, bring me half a dozen, and mind you choose small ones !' And my friend was right. An oyster that has to be cut into six or eight pieces before you can get it into your mouth is a serious monster, and two dozen such are more than enough for any appetite. As the cars rolled along from Washington to Amelia Court House, the Virginia that I saw was a land of low woods, copper-coloured and golden, lighted here and there by the sun's reflection on fine streams or the broad sheets of woodland lakes. But there seemed \% 14—2 212 BRITISH COLUMBIA. very little farm-land, no mountains, no diversity of scenery, and over all hung a heavy sky charged with moist damp heat, enervating to the last degree. But here we are at the station, and in good sooth that extremely long-legged person in Bedford cords and riding-boots must be my 'little brother/ It is a relief to hear that he doesn't speak Yankee yet; indeed, the chief recommendation of Virginia is that emigrants remain English in this State longer than in any other, at least as far as accent and manners go. Between the station and my brother's house a rough road runs through thick woodlands, pretty but unprofitable. The house itself is, like those of other English settlers in the county, the best part of the farm, and is a well-built little place of four rooms on the ground-floor. Inside, the owner's taste for natural history and a turn for carpentry had made the rooms into pretty compromises between a small museum and an ordinary dwelling. Butterflies and birds* eggs 'OLD virginy: 213 in home-made frames hung on the walls in lieu of pictures; there were skins on the floor for carpets ; in place of family portraits, heads of beavers, trapped on the farm, and turkey-cocks with long greenish beards, grinned at you from polished shields ; a large collection of pipes, weapons, traps and harness finished the inventory ; there was lots of room to put your things on the floor ; there were some guinea-hens just outside, and two niggers employed on the farm to catch and cook them for you ; there was a fair supply of liquor which arrived along with us, and, as my host said, what could anyone want more ? Young Englishmen may be hard to please at home, but they seem to do wonderfully well with very few luxuries abroad. For my own part, after the first two or three days, I began to think it rather hard about dinner- time to be obliged to first catch your guinea- fowl, then catch your cook (a much harder process), after which you might go and dine ■'■ (• . i ■* ii 'A li m i .i* 214 BRITISH COLUMBIA. w safely on something else, and rely on the bird being ready for the morrow. The well, too, is about half a mile or more from the house, and it takes a nigger, as far as my experience goes, about an hour and a half to go there and back. When you go out to dinner to a neighbour's house, by all means attire yourself in the claw- hammer coat of civilized diners-out in the East, as in anything but your best clothes you would miss some of the pleasure of an even- ing stroll through the woods on your way home. For instance, on your way to dinner, there is between you and your neighbour's domain a * crik ' — i.e., a water-course of con- siderable breadth, and waist-deep at least. Across this the simple settler has thrown a rough-hewn tree-stem, and being rather proud of your powers of balance, you walk gaily across it. But wait a bit. On your way home the moon will throw an uncertain light (and very little of it) over everything ; you feel as you put foot on the trunk that you 'OLD virginy: 215 dou't know which is tree and which shadow, and in a horrible firight you sit down astride the bridge and begin to hop across like a frog or a riding-master's pupil learning to trot. Half-way over you meet with an obstacle in the shape of a foot Bud a half of unshorn limb, in hopping over which you either leave a sample of your clothes behind you, or plunge headlong into the stream below. The romance of woodland walks by moonlight is best enjoyed in civilized countries or books. Sporii in Virginia— at least, in the part I visited — is extremely poor. Quail you find, and turkeys, woodcock, plover, jack-rabbits, and an occasional duck. Squirrels would give you sport, but no one here seems to use a rifle. * Oh, dum your rifles !' said an old settler to me. * Give me a two-pipe scatter- gun and a spike-tailed smell-dawg, and I'm fixed.' And this gentleman's neatly expressed opinion seems to be pretty generally received. Wi m « Si 2l6 BRITISH COLUMBIA. I I 1 He might have added a sorry-looking steed to his catalogue of sporting necessaries, and the picture would have heen complete. Three or four times I went out with my gun over my brother's farm and elsewhere, but saw only two or three woodcock and one jack-rabbit, with perhaps a couple of bevies of quail, all the time. And small wonder, for every day you see a different gentleman on horseback carrying a gun, three or four dogs ranging wide around him ; and in this style he runs over the whole country, paying no regard to the sporting rights of the different land- owners, and harrying a very wide district in a eingle day. At night, too, the gentle nigger takes his turn, and you may hear him yelling for all he is worth, in the pursuit of 'possums in your woods. When the hunters by day and hunters by night, together with the claims of poaching dogs, have been considered, it will surprise no one to hear that a bevy of quail to every hundred acres, and one turkey to every twenty gunners, is a fair proportion OLD VIRGINY.' 217 in Amelia County ; and, taking one thing with another, a Virginian sportsman's life is not a happy one. Dunng my stay in the country I visited several very pleasant fellows, who prefer farming in America to a more sedentary life in Englarl. Many of these had heen public- school men, or even graduates of Oxford or Cambridge, and their homes were full of taste- ful souvenirs of home and the old country. They seemed hard workers and!keen farmers, too, but no one of them all claimed that he made farming pay; and more than one admitted that the only person who could hope to make money was the usurer, who, having capital, lent it to his needy neighbour at twelve per cent. If the niggers I saw in Virginia were fair samples of their class, the black man does not seem to consider his freedom an unmixed good. Those I met told me that they were far better off as slaves than now ; that their masters, looking on them as valuable pro- ( il t ■f I 2l8 BRITISH COLUMBIA. %s perty, fed and clothed them well in health, and obtained the best medical attendance for them in sickness; they were rarely over- worked, and living generally aU their Uves on the same estate, were well looked after by their master or their own relatives in old age. Now they are hired only when there is an absolute necessity for field-labourers ; regular employment all the year round is not easy to get, and the majority of them are going away from the land into the towns, where the work is of a lighter kind and more congenial to nigger nature. As for the * man-and-brother ' theory, it is, of course, idle clap -trap. No black man ever was, or ever will be, looked upon in the States or elsewhere as an equal by his white fellow-citizen. Who ever saw a coloured man a guest at the public table of any big New York hotel, for instance ? As a matter of fact, the negro has not the * go ' either of white man or Chinaman ; he was all very well perhaps in his own country, but among white races he can only fill the posi- wm 'OLD virginy: 219 tion of a dependent and protege of his white employer. li, said my black friend, who seemed far away the most intelligent specimen of his race I ever met, the Americans had introduced laws for the protection of slaves and in restraint of cruelty and misuse on the part of masters, and forbidden further importation of slaves into the country, they would have done away with the chief evils of slavery, and left the majority of the slaves much happier and more profitable citizens than they are now. So much for Sam's views on slavery. Perhaps he ia one among a million, but, at any rate, his are the opinions of one at least among the race chiefly in- terested in the question of emancipation. On Sunday the mules were brought round, and, in our best clothes, we rode away to church, the heavy dew on overhanging boughs rapidly removing all the glossiness of our apparel, and reducing a * masher ' collar to a limp and woe-begone wet rag. The church i 11 220 BRITISH COLUMBIA. stands in the very middle of the wood, and it is somev/hat difficult to know when service is going to begin, as no definite hour seems fixed. The mules are all tied up to trees outside the building, and no surprise is evinced when the whole male congregatio?^ makes a rush to the door, returning when half the service is over as if nothing had happened. It is a stampede amongst the mules. During the service at which I assisted, a dog, which had taken up his position within the altar-rails, seemed greatly to incommode the unfortunate clergyman, who experienced considerable difficulty in getting round the intruder without treading on his tail, and thereby causing a scene. Alto- gether, the Sunday arrangements were dis- tinctly primitive ; but it is something that such a small congregation should maintain a church at all. To up my short ofV^ experience jal may aa. sum I should say that a good doned for the sake of the good-fei^.j'vship be con- ^ m i 'OLD virciny: 221 which exists amongst most of the settlers, and for the sake of the proximity of centres of civilization like Eichmond, Washington, and New York; but if you place, on the other hand, an a\crage yield of only eight bushels to the acre of wheat, and land generally poor and played out, though the price is still a good one for the seller and an unremunerative one for the buyer ; if you add a relaxing and unhealthy climate (mind, I only speak of the level lands ; I know nothing of the mountain district), a paucity of game unequalled on the least-preserved and worst-stocked farms at home; if, I say, you take these things into consideration, reader, you will never send any friend of yours to the worst State in the Union for a young settler to make money or be happy in. ^^ % n u i I \ J' H X. * TO THE WOULD BE •EMIGRANT.* Just one short chapter hefore I close this book, and then, reader, I'll leave you to go and find out more for yourself, if the subject has interested you, or wait until I can send you further details from British Columbia itself. Most of us, ap we sit over our fire at night, find our thoughts wandering from time to time to some friend who, in the hey- day of life, has disappeared from our life's orbit. In nine cases out of ten he is the * brightest, cheeriest chap ' we knew, and when we tax our memory for his present whereabouts, we shall find he is * cattle -ranch- ing in Wyoming or Montana,' plucking ostriches * TO THE WOULD BE-EMIGRANT: 223 at the Cape, or oranges in Florida, or at any rate engaged in some unusual occupation abroad. Most of them, however, have * gone to America.* There is hardly one family in twenty now in England which has not at some time sent one of its cadets * out West.' And the worst of it is that these men who go out from us are not our weaklings ; but, gentle or simple, if they are to succeed they must be taken from the number of those we can ill afford to lose. The emigrant class itself is beginning to realize this nowadays, and none too soon. Ne'er-do-weels who won't work, and muffs who can't ; unfortunate clerks and pro- fessional men, only fitted for a profession at home already crammed to repletion, will find more philanthropists to support them at home than abroad. There are already too many of our shiftless ne'er-do-weels hanging about the American towns to please Brother Jonathan. I know a town in the States of about a thousand houses, which has five doctors (two m yy% H'A ^ I liu i|i. 4« II ■r^P^ j„'.y.^|..,..iUJiMi 234 BRITISH COLUMBIA. :(! 1 at least of them imported from England), and I don't suppose there are a hundred * cases ' to divide between the five in a year. It is a country in which health thrives better than physic. But since England's population is too big for her, and all her courts thronged with suitors for occupation which she cannot give ; since competition at home has grown too keen for any but the greater capitalists, either in brain or money, emigration is a necessary evil, and those who go, if they are of the right sort, will be the gainers. And the right sort is after this manner — small farmers of the hardy Shropshire and Welsh breeds, who on one hundred or two hundred acre farms iiave for the last seven years fought an uphill fight against bad seasons and heavy lands, grum- bling less than their richer and luckier neigh- bours, and working harder and with their own hands, but in vain. If they will stay at home and fight and hope, Heaven help them and send them better seasons; but if (; I TO THE WOULD-BE EMIGRANT. 225 they seek to better themselves abroad, God speed them ! they are the right sort. I mention these men specially because I know them best, but any others of a like type would succeed. In fact, any English farmer would succeed out West ; for though there are no doubt good farmers in America, as a class they seem to me not to have been brought up to their trade as our men have. Labourers, too, and artisans can earn far higher wages out West than we can afford to pay them here ; though in many places the cost of living is so high as to take a great deal of the gilt off their gingerbread. The president of an Oxford college told me that some of his men had gone ostrich-farm- ing, because, having been so often plucked themselves, they expected to be able to per- form the operation with the greatest success on their birds. But apart from ' chaff/ the younger sons of country clergymen and squires, used all their days to village life, fond of farming and 15 c; 226 BRITISH COLUMBIA. II II f i (( il If If I / '■ I field-sports, who have been educated perhaps for the army, and only missed their commis- sions because they could not be heroes at the same time of examinations and play-gronnds — these, if they have a little capital and a large capacity for honest hard work, are also of the right sort. But, remember, if you would do the best by your sons, reader, don't send them to the first man whose advertisement for farm pupils (espe- cially of the young gentleman class) catches your eye in the newspaper. Farming must be learnt by practice. The practice given your son will take the form of farm-labourer's work for his teacher, and such practice he would get just as well by working for any other farmer for hire, and in this way he would earn a good supply of monthly pocket-money and save his premium, which would be far better spent in a couple of months' cruise in the country of his adoption for the purpose of selecting a locality for himself, before binding himself to what may not be for him the most TO THE WOULD-BE EMIGRANT. 227 advantageous spot by investing his capital at the outset. Of course, if you have a friend to whom to send the boy, that makes a differ- ence. But beware of advertisers. Since, then, the men who are to go from among us are of the very material from which most of England's prosperity and almost all her glory has been rough-hewn in days of old^ and since it is best for them to go and we have no longer power to keep them, there remains only one thing for England's real well-wishers to do, and that is to point out as fully as may be to all intending emigrants that there is no need or reason to leave the brave old flag their fathers loved and bled for ; that it waves over colonies in every clime which offer to them every chance which the loud-tongued advertisers of America can offer ; that in British Columbia and the islands on her coast there is as much freedom, as much chance of success, as much sport, as in any part of the United States ; there are cheap farm-lands and a glorious climate, abundant 15—2 P 'ill 'I ;) 1 ' / i 328 BRITISH COLUMBIA fish and fowl, and industries as yet almost untried; new lines are just opening up the country and letting in firesh blood ; and above all, they can remain there — in Canada, in Australia, and throughout our colonies — ^English subjects still. America is our friend to-day; perhaps she might have been our loyal eldest child, had we had more foresight in the past. But a country which has once warred with another can never again be as truly one with its somewhile foe as if they had always been part and parcel of the same nation. War with America is a thing to pray against, and luckily the last thing to expect. But it is a possibility, and that being so, is it not better to guide our strong-limbed true-hearted wan- derers to lands in which they may beget a race of thoroughbred Britishers, who, when statesmen shall have found time to leave little bickerings and foolish philanthropies and turn to matters of importance to the state they are supposed to serve, may be our strongest weapon for defence or offence in a federation TO THE WOULD-BE EMIGRANT. 229 of Britain and her colonies which shall con- tain within its own domains all the products of earth or sea that man can need, and be strong enough to keep the peace of a world ? '^■«flMf)»..«V-1 .■W^/"'*1V'r»' I ' ■«ii ".iiip" luiLn.' li< |j ' 1 1/ I r nil POSTSCRIPT. When I laid down my pen a month ago, I thought I had finished my hook, and i good'hye to my readers. Since then, how- ever, I have had so many questions put to me hy people interested in emigration and anxious to ohtain information ahout America, and the life and prospects of young colonists in our share of that country, that I am tempted to take up my pen again and say a word or two more for the benefit of those who either have already sent sons or capital to that country, or are thinking of doing so now. Unless a man insists on going about the world with his eyes shut, he must nowadays be struck with the number of young fellows of good family and education who are annually leaving POSTSCRIPT. 231 our country to seek a competence elsewhere. You can hardly find a family in Great Britain to-day that has not got at least one member at work in one or other of our colonies. It is not only that competitive examinations have "Josed so many careers to all except those whose strength is in their heads, and who have a natural aptitude for cramming ; not only that the lower classes — thanks to their advanced education — are beginning to give up handicrafts and crowd clerkdom with sons who prefer the shabby gentility of a city clerk to the hearty independence of the skilled labouring man, and so hustle the poor gentle- man oflF his last sad refuge- — the office-stool ; but lots of other causes combine to make the free healthy life of America more and more attractive to our young men. Agricultural distress has made many turn their eyes West who would otherwise have been just able to jog along in some ill-paid profession at home ; the difficulty of investing money to pay a reasonably high rate of interest in England \il r,smiT~3m rai ~r!~ ifiiiiTiiwi I'M* •7*Pi li M ^ 232 BRITISH COLUMBIA. has caused others to take their capital to lands in which it will yield a more bountiful i'etum; and a large proportion of educated emigrants have left, and are still leaving England, simply because they are sick of a country in which the legislature is perpetually meddling with private rights instead of attend- ing to public business. Men are not partizans or great talkers often in the backwoods, but it would do certain politicians no harm to hear the strong language in which Englishmen on frontier farms in America, and by far-away camp-fires, con- demn a Government which allowed itself to be bullied by a pack of rebel Irish; which took a licking from a handful of Boers and sought refuge in conciliation — a word defined by Mr. Lowell to mean • Be kicked, However well you phrase and tone it. It means that we're to sit down, licked ; That we're poor shots and fain to own it ;' and then, Laving disgraced the nation abroad, set to work wHh a will to ram a Ground Game i POSTSCRIPT. 233 Act down our throats ; to attempt to gag the Opposition ; and to aim the first blow at Eng- lish sport generallyby considering a BiU brought forward by a gentleman who appears to think that * blue rocks ' require to be mutilated to make them fly fast (or is it to make them fly slower, that they may be easier to hit ?), and that the birds ^.hemselves prefer to have their necks twisted or their brains pierced by the butcher's penknife to having a chance for their lives or death by a charge of shot. And whilst England is wasting time thus, a strong foe, with a foreign policy which has never wavered, has pushed steadily nearer to our Indian frontiers, until, in spite of all predictions to the contrary, Kussia has steadily fulfilled every prophecy of the Russoph .hist, has passed one by one the intervening stages, and is now at Merv I But I apologize for wandering from my subject. Let me get back to humbler themes, and join a band of young English emigrants just leaving the Old Country for the New. 1 -I n ^1 ■.■rm:in^t'»'^-sn!Ss«f<^--r?'rr'-': :4C— .LtAtjaoMiiKaik. *>■■' P,j(;*>'<*i.a» i I: I 234 BRITISH COLUMBIA. The first thing which I find fault with in my new friends is, that not one in ten has had an idea that his future career was to be that of a colonist until the last few months; until, in fact, he had finally failed to get into Sandhurst, to obtain his degree, or had ' gone that terrible mucker ' which led to a very bad quarter of an hour at home, and the final decision that the culprit should leave England, if not for his own benefit, at least to ensure peace of mind to his relations. As to the emigration of this class, I believe it to be a miserable mistake. If a youngster cannot be kept in the right road at home, in his own country, under the eye of his relations, and when held by all the ties of home associ- ations, it is extremely improbable that he will improve when he is cast loose in a rougher and new world, far from the sight of those whose blame is perhaps the only thing he dreads, and with that most hopeless feeling of all at his heart, that he is exiled, not by his own choice, but for his country's (or at least r POSTSCRIPT. 235 his family's) good. As to the others, if they failed to pass their examinations hecause they cultivated their muscles at the expense of their brains, and preferred to be the best *■ half-back ' or ' straightest bat ' in the school to being at the head of every examination list, the only fault to find with them and their friends is, that, such being the case, they did not make up their minds to forego the plea- sures of English life sooner, and acquire, whilst there was yet time, such things as would be useful to then » a frontier life. A man who goes out West with anytliing like a competent knowledge of farming must sue ceed ; for, as far as I saw, not half or a quarter of those now farming have ever been brouj^ht up to their trade, or even now practise it sys- tematically. Half the farmers amongst the Americans have been employed in some otlier line of life until they have reached manhood, or even middle age. I have known in my short sojourn in the West, barber's clerks, railway officials, shopkeepers, and preachers. I % ■■PETTWSscir" •mms^^^mmi /! f k i I I 236 BRITISH COLUMBIA. who have given up thei: original callings for agriculture, and yet have made a decent live- lihood out of the trade of their adoption. If these men can make it pay, how much more should the practical farmer do so, with these rich acres, for which he pays no rent, but buys at a nominal price ? Besides, bad times and heavy rents are not the only things which farmers have to contend with in England nowadays, and from which they are free out West. Eents, indeed, have almost everywhere ceased to be high now. It is the landlord who suffers from bad seasons most, not his tenant. But * out West ' there is no need to come in to the coimty or market town once a week to sell or buy stock or other farm necessaries ; no need, therefore, for a good many glasses of something to warm the hearts of diffident purchasers, or of a good many cigars to talk business over ; of * smartish * cobs and dog-carts to drive in with, and many other things which come of too frequent visits H POSTSCRIPr. 237 to * io^n.' Moreover, there is not a sale to attend about once a week at some neighbour's farm, nor a day's hunting to be had ' just to cheer one up a bit and show the 3^oung horse.' In fact, out West the farmer has six days a week to farm in, and can find no excuse for employing any of them otherwise ; and since there is no one likely to criticize his appear- ance, he spends no money on outward show, caring only for what he thinks of his own sur- roundings, and not for what his neighbours think of them. And this, and the fact that in America all social restrictions are left behind, and no work thought derogatory to the dignity even of the best boin and gentlest bred, so long as theworkishoniist, are the chief things which render America a better field for a young and energetic man than England. But I should be very sorry to assert that if a man had the pluck and self-denial to work as hard and live as simply and unpretendingly on some English farms as he would be obliged to do in America, he might not succeed almost I 238 BRITISH COLUMBIA. as well in the Old Country as in the New. UnfortniJ.itely, very few men have sufficient streT>gth of character to live amongst their fellows, and be with them but not of them. I hope I may not be misunderstood in what I have said about the cheering glass, or the one day a week to hounds. No man likes either better than the present writer ; no man would see others enjoy them less grudgingly. All I mean is this : In comparing the success of emigrant farmers with farmers at home, it is only fair to remember that, as a set-off against their success, it must be borne in mind that they have to work from dawn to dark for six days a week, at least; that they do all kinds of work for themselves, and take all their reward in a lump called ' success,' or * a small fortune,' at the end of twenty or thirty years, instead of spreading their fun over their whole lives in the form of sport, social pleasures, home comfort, and the like. Sport of a kind of course men get out "West ; but the pursuit of big game requires POSTSCRIPT. 239 ll too much time, and too long journeys, to be as a rule within the reach of farmers ; and though wild-fowl shooting is good in places, I never saw anything on the cultivated lands I was over to compare to a day's rough shoot- ing over an English farm. As to society, if the settler chooses to settle on the Eastern coast, the nearer he comes to New "Xork and the big towns, the dearer the land becomes, and, as a rule, the poorer. The farther he goes West, the less society he is likely to find, unless he chooses to locate himself within reach of one cf our own colonial centres, like Victoria. As to sending boys out to farm- tutors — gentlemen who offer comfortable homes and instruction in farming to all and sundry tender-feet who choose to come to them, in return for a handsome premium — all I can do is to repeat what all men out West will say to you, 'Don't do it.' There are, no doubt, some men who make a very honest living in this way, and give the youngsters all they can in return for their hundred i ii ^mmm ^P^«^W^^|i^i^w^»W?PWr" 340 BRITISH COLUMBIA. J: pounds ; but there are a great many more who don't do anything of the kind, who know little enough themselves of any kind of farming, except the farming of English tender-feet. Experience is the only teacher worth paying out West, and he is always to be found, and his lessons are rarely for- gotten. Broadly speaking, comfortable homes — such homes as the fond parents dream of for their boys when they pay their premiums — don't exist out West. What the teacher does for the boy is this: He gives him board and bed. The lad lives with the tutor's family ; so, in the same degree, do the farm-labourers. The lad is required to help on the tutor's farm, and works at whatever labour the seasons bring. In this way is he taught, and no better plan for teaching him could possibly be devised; but he could get the same tuition, the same board and lodging, and the same social advantages, and a dollar a day for his labour, without the payment of POSTSCRIPT. 24X any premium, by merely calling himself what he is, a farm labourer, instead of what he is not, a farm pupil. If the parents know some one of many years' experience in farm life out West, with whom are already quartered several young fellows of the same class and education as their own boy, and they feel that their youngster is hardly old enough to * paddle his own canoe ' as yet, by all means let them then pay the premium for the friend's supervision, and for the sake of the society the boy will get. But the people I am try- ing to warn Englishmen against are the host of advertisers, whose prey is the verdant tenderfoot. Far better for the boy, if you have a hundred pounds to spare, to give it to him, to spend in wandering through the New Country, in order that he may see for himself where money is most likely to be made, and where life would be most enjoyable and profit- able at the same time. The name of the ventures in which men engage now in the newer lands of America is 16 J, 1 242 BRITISH COLUMBIA. \ legion, but perhaps cattle-ranching, wheat farming, lumber mills, salmon-canning, orange growing in Florida, and viticulture in Cali- fornia, with ostrich farming as the latest novelty, attract the greatest share of capital and enterprise from England. Of wheat grow- ing I have spoken at some length in writing of Washington Territory; of salmon-canning, men complain that the market is glutted, and of cattle-ranching, that the best lands are most of them already filled up. As to that, we have in the Peace Kiver country probably the greatest cattle land ever yet opened up, and as yet no herds, save those of its wild denizens, have cropped its grasses. Of orange growing and cattle-ranching, most men will still tell you that from 20 to 25 per cent, may be made on money invested in them ; but to live in one's own orange-grove all the year round is impossible for an Englishman, or almost so, thanks to the fever and heat which render Florida intoler- able ; and if you have an agent to manage IIIHl POSTSCRIPT. a43 your affairs for you, you must be the luckiest of men, or a loser of a considerable share of that 20 per cent, talked of above. Grape growing in California is perhaps one of the most attractive industries of America, and one which, though it is rapidly being overcrowded, is likely to repay the grape grower hand- somely. The Californian climate is a healthy and delightful one, and the work pleasant com- pared to most of those by which men earn their bread in the sweat of their brow. A* the present moment California produces ten million gallons of wine per annum, for which there is a ready demand at from 25 to 30 cents the gallon at the cellars as soon as the wine is fit for transportation ; and sufficient wine grapes are now planted to produce 40 million gallons per annum after the next five years. Whether the demand will keep pace with the supply is uncertain, as at present the Americans are not great consumers of wine, and new wines take a long time to 16—2 »44 BRITISH COLUMBIA, \ ;■■» establish themselves in foreign countries. The original Califomian vine, introduced by the Spanish Missions, is a free bearer, and is much used in most of the Califomian wines, though the grape is said to produce a strong unwholesome wine, by no means equal to the wine made from Zinfandel grapes, which bears a considerable resemblance to Carlowitz. Zinfandel is rapidly becoming the chief vine of the country. In the cooler districts of California, in rich deep land, the Biesling grape is grown, from which a white wine is made, to my mind far away the best of all the Califomian wines. These wines, and a light white wine called Gutedel, made from the sweetwater grape, are the chief wines of California; but some of the more enterprising of the wine growers of the country have recently introduced some of the higher class Bordeaux and Burgundy grapes, of which small quantities of good wine have already been made. The only objection to growing these high-class grapes, is that i POSTSCRIPT. 245 they are not free bearers, they require high training on stakes, and as wages in California are as high as 30 dollars a month and board, this adds largely to the cost of produc- tion. The price obtainable for the wine thus grown is unfortunately not in proportion to the in- creased cost of production. The grower gets 30 dols. a ton for Zinfandel, producing four to five tons per acre and not more than 40 dols. for a ton of high class wine, the vines for which would only yield a ton and a half to the acre and require a much more expensive system of cultivation. Besides grapes grown for wine, large quantities are grown for the table and for conversion into raisins. Alto- gether, perhaps, the United States offer no more tempting field for the energies and capital of fairly well-to-do young Englishmen than the vineyards of California; but it should be borne in mind that the outlay in this business is very considerable, and the profits do not begin to come in for some time. 246 BRITISH COLUMBIA. Good land for vineyards costs as mnch as 200 dols. an acre, or with vines in bearing 1,000 dois. per acre. If you buy your land and plant, your vinos don't begin to bear for five years, and ar^ only in full bearing for eight years after. The nett returns average from 75 to 150 dols. the acre. There I think is a very fair sketch of one of the most attractive industiies in the United States, supplied to me by a Mend who is himself engaged in California wine-growing. If you are rich enough to come home from January 1st to May, during which time it rains pretty regularly, you might do worse, reader, than become a Oalifomian viticulturist ; but though I have only had three months experience of America, let me offer you a piece of advice gratis. You may take it or leave it, as you please. If you are going to America to live, to make yourself a new home, and rear your children there, go not to the loudly advertised States, but to what is only an extension of your own home, Canada POSTSCRIPT. 247 or British Columbia. Of conrse, a vast number of us must leave England. The dear old island is too small to hold us all; but because we can't live in the very heart of our Empire, that is no reason why we should lea\a her altogether. They tell us that Great Britain contains only 120,000 square miles, an area which can now barely contain or support her teem- ing population ; they tell us that this said populat'ton doubles itself every seventy years. Well, be it so, English enterprise and English courage have bought with English blood and life and well spent energy terri- tories in all parts of the world which seem almost illimitable. In spoaking of America, men too often forget that America means any more than the United States. A glance at the map shows us that our flag floats over half of North America, that two million square miles of the continent belonging to us is capable of cultivation, of which enormous area one III 248 BRITISH COLUMBIA. li ( half will grow any crop grown in Great Britain. The corn-fields of Manitoba, averaging they say 28 bnshels to the acre, are as good as, or better than, aiiy in the States. Wyoming and Montana are for the most part taken up for ranching purposes, hut the wonderful pastures of the Peace River country are still untenanted. Grapes and oranges we do not grow in British territory as far as I know, but in any other product of earth or sea, or minerals under the earth, our share of North America is as rich as any part of Yankeedom. Since, then, necessity compels and will compel a large portion of our people to emigrate, and since these, if they are to be successful, must be men of the very best bone and fibre of our country, of the sort that has won us not only our national glory, but our material prosperity in times past ; it behoves all lovers of England to guide them in their going, so that though they leave Great POSTSCRIPT. 249 Britain, it may only be for a province of that Greater Britain beyond the seas. Apart from the fact that British America is as rich in natural products as the United States, here are two reasons out of many why EngUshmen should setth in British America, rather than in the States. The first is for the good of the mother country. Not only does the English emigrant to our colonies add to the wealth of the empire, by bringing its untilled property into a state of profitable cultivation, but also by consuming the manu- factures which England produces. And that a colonist does more for us here in England as a consumer of our produce than he would do as an emigrant to an alien State, the Board of Trade Returns quoted by Sir Alexander Gait clearly show. Quoting from these in a speech before the Colonial Institute in London, he stated that during the three years then under consideration, the English emigrants to the United States had consumed only 8s. 4d. per man per annum in English HI 250 BRITISH COLUMBIA. manufactures, whilst emigrants to Canada had consumed, during the same period, at the rate of 32s. per man per annum, thus show- ing that emigrants to Canada were, during those three years, at any rate, as mere con- sumers of English produce, more profitable to the mother country at the rate of about four to one th.an the emigrants to the United States. My second reason directly concerns the individual emigrant. I have no wish to say hard things of the Americans, but plain speaking is a habit with Englishmen, and if any of our cousins across the herring pond ever read what I have ^vritten, they must forgive the habit in me. Americans are our very good friends, and very good fellows, too, many of them ; though, perhaps, if they would keep their home-made dynamite for home con- sumption, we should like them none the worse for it. Yet, for all that, though I met a number of English emigrants during my travels, who had passed many years in the POSTSCRIPT. 251 States, I never met one yet who would admit that the Yankee folk much resembled the old folk at home. A settler in the frontier territories, United States, sees, of course, the roughest side of the Yankee character, and it was of that side that a quondam Gloucester- shire yeoman was speaking when he told me, * I tried to settle first in the States, but I couldn't get on anyhow with the people. They generally called me a sanguinary Britisher if they only wanted to be polite, and when they were pleased, swore so awfully that you couldn't sit in the rooms with them/ Then there is another thing. A Yankee ap- pears to live only for the dollar. Our men like dollars, but believe that the dollar was made for man, not man for the dollar. The perpetual fever of speculation in American frontier towns, or on an American line of rail, is enough to engender lunacy in an average Englishman. In our American colony there is plenty of push and energy, but life is not a mere fitful fever, and our ) i i mtmmmmr-- 252 BRITISH COLUMBIA. colonists try to get some sport and pleasure out of life, quite apart from gambling. Finally, then, since no Englishman can wish to belong to any race but his own — since he is able to do better as an Englishman acquir- ing land in an English colony, than by ac- quiring land as an alien, or even as a naturalized American in the United States of America — since it is best for his country and best for him to emigrate (if he must emigrate) to what is only an expansion of his home land — I pray him to bear these things in mind, so that when the land of illimitable possibilities (as Lord Beaconsfield aptly called it) shall have reared its race of stalwart, prosperous British colonists, his children may stand amongst those who, in the federation of England with her colonies, still keep the old flag of our country well in the forefront of the nations. THE END. BILLING AND SON8, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD. 8.&H "?■*'■' A SELECTED LIST OF STANDARD PUBLICATIONS & REMAINDERS Offered for Sale at remarkably low prices by JOHN GRANT, BOOKSELLER. 25 & 34 George IV. Bridge, EDINBURGH. 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" Tha object of this treatise is to sive a concise account of tha origin, seat, and characteristics of the Scottish Clans, together with a representatim of the distinguishing tartan worn by each."— Pr^/^r. Historical Geography of the Clans of Scotland^ by T. B. Johnston, F.R.G.S., F.R.S.E., and F.S.A.S., Geographer to the Queen, and Colonel James A. Robertson, F.S.A.S., demy4to, cloth, with a map of Scotland divided into Clans (large folding map, coloured) (pub 78 6d), Keith Johnston, 3s. 6d. " Tlie map bears evidence of careful preparation, and the editor acknowledges the assistance of Dr William Skene, who is known for eminent services to High- land archaology."-^^/A/MtrvaM\y interesting and curious work."— Lownois. Chambers' i ( l^illiam^ of Glenormiston) History of Peebles- shirty its LoctU Antiquities, Geolc^, Natural History, &c., with one hundred ei^ravings, vignettes, and coloured map from Ordnance Survey, royal 8vo, cloth (pub £\ lis 6d), 9s. W. Patersoa. "To the early history and antiquities of this district, and to old names and old families connected with the place, Mr Chambers lends a charm which is not often met with in such sul^ects. He discerns the usefulness of social as well as political history, and is pleasantly aware that the story of manners and morals and customs is as well worth telhng as the story of man," %LC.—AthtmeMtn. Dougla^ {Gavin, Bishop of JDunkeld, 1473-1 j 22) Poetical Works, edited, with Memoir, Notes, and full Glossary, by John Small, M.A., F.S.A. Scot., illustrated with specimens of manu- script, title>page, and woodcuts of the early editions in facsimile, 4 vols, beautifully printed on thick paper, post 8vo, cloth (pub j63 3s)> ;f I 2s 6d. W. Paterson. " The latter part of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centurj', a period almost barren in the annals of Englitm poetry, was marked by a remark- able series of distinguished poeu in Scotland. During this period flourished Dunbar, Heniyson. 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DuvfermUne — Henderson's Annals of Dunfermline ana Vidnit)\ frnsn ll»e earliest Authentic Period to the Present Time, ...l>. 1069- 1878, interspersed with Explar3tory Notes, Memorabilia, ind numerous illustrative engravings, large vcl, 410, half morocco, gilt top (pub 3is), 6s 6d. The ffenial Author of ** Nodes Ambrosiana." Christopher ^orth — A Memoir of Professor John Wilson, coPipiled from Family Papers and other sources, by his daughter, M.s Gordon, new edition, with portrait and illustration'], crown 8vo, cloth (pub 6s), 2s 6d. '" A writer of the mc^st ardent and enthusiastic genius." — Hunrv Hallam. " The whole literature r.f England does not contain a more brillicnt scries of articles than those with which Wilson has enriched the pages of Blackiv^yods Mag isiM."— Sir ARCHinAio Ausok. The Cloud of Witnesses for the Royal Prerogatives of Jesus Christ ; or, The Last Speeches and Testimonies of those who have Suffered for the Truth in hivollond since the year 1680, best edition, by the Rev. J. H. Thompson, numerous illustrations, handsome volume, 8vo, cloth gilt (pub 7s 6d), 4s 6d. " The interest in this remarkable liook can ntver die, and to many v/e doubt not thin »>ew and handsome edition will be welcome." — Aberdttn Heralti. " Altoi^ether it is like a re>urrection, and the vision of Old Mortality, as It passes over the scenes of his humble but solemn and sternly significant labours, seems transfigured in the bright and embellished pages of the modem reprint." — Daily R^iiew. M'K^rlie's (P. H., F.S.A. S^ot.) History 0/ the Zands and their Orvfters in Gatlmoay, iliustratetl by woodcuts of Notable Places ^..; Objects, with a Plistorical Sketch of the District, 5 handsome vols, Ciown 8vo, Iroxburghe style (pub ;^3 15,^), 26s 6d. W. Patersoi. 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" These episodes read like chapters in the ' History of the Seven Champions ; ' they give vivid pictures of the incidents of that wonderful achievement, the triumphal progrens from Sicily to Naples ; and the incidental details of the difficulties, dangers, and small reverses which occurred during the progress, remove the event from the region of enchantment to the world of reality and human heroism." — Athetuntm, History of the War of Frederick I. against the Communes of Lontbardji, by Giovanni B. Testa, translated from the Italian, and dedicated by the Author to the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, (466 pages), Svo, cloth (pub 153) 2s, Smith, Elder, & Co. Martineau {Harriet) — The History of British Rule in India, foolscap Svo (356 pages), cloth (pub 2s 6d), is, Smith, Elder, & Co. A concise sketch, which will give the ordinary reader a general notion of what our Indian empire is, how we came by it, and what has gone forward in it since it first became connected with England. 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"An admirable work, both as a record of travel and as a contribution to physical science." — VaMitv Fair. Patterson {R. H.) — The Neiv Golden Age, and Influence of the Preciotts Metals upon the IVar, 2 "ols, 8vo, cloth (puh 3IS 6d), 68, Blackwood & Sons. Contents. Vol I. — The Period ok Discovery and Romance ok the New Golden Age, 1848-S6. — The First Tidings — Scientific Fears, and General Enthusiasm — The Great Emigration — Genera! Effects of the Gold Discoveries upon Commerce —Position of Great Britain, and First Effects on it of the Gold Discoveries — The Golden Age in California and Australia— Life at the Mines. A Retrospect. — History and Influence of the Precious Metals down to the Birth of Modem Europe — The Silver Age in America— Effects of the &iilver Age upon Europe — Production of the Precious Metals during the Silver Age (1492-18*0)— Effects of the Silver Age upon the Value of Money (1492-1800). Vol II.— Period ok Renewed Scarcity.— Renewed Scarcityof the Precious Metals, a.d. 1800-30 — The Period of Scarcity, Part II.— Effects upon Great Britain — The Scarcity lessens — Beginnings of a New Gold Suppiv— Gencnil Distress before the (iold Discoveries. "Chkah" and "Dear" NIoney— On the Effects of Changes in the Quantity and Valueof Money. The New (ioloen Age. — First Getting of the New Gold— First Diffusion of the New Gold — Indus- trial Enterprise in Europe — Vast Expansion of Trade with the East (a.d. 1855- 75) — Total Amount of the New Gold and Silver— Its Influence upon the World at large — Close of the Golden Age, 1876-80 — Total Production of Gold and Silver. Period 1492-1848. — Production of Gold and Silver subsequent to 1848— Changes in the Value of Money subsequent to v.D. 149a. Period a.d. 1848 and subsequently. Period a.d. 1782- 1865.— Illusive Character of the Board of Trade Returns since 1853— Groi*"tn of our National Wealth. Richardson and Waits' Complete Practical Treatise on Adds, Alkalies, and Halts, their Manufacture and. Application, by Thomas Richardson, Ph.EV, F.R.S., Sec, and Henry Watts, F.R.S , F.C.S., &c., illustrated with numerous wood engravings, 3 thick 8vo vols, cloth (pub ^4 los), 8s 6d, London. Tunis, Past and Present, with a Narrative of the French Conquest of the l\egency, by A. M. Broadley, Correspondent of the '/'imes during the War in Tunis, with numerous iilustrtition.s and maps, 2 vols, ,>ost 8vo, cloth (pub 25s), 6s, Blackwood & Sons. '* Mr Broadley has i>ad peculiar facilities in collecting materials for Ki> volumes. Possessing a thorough knowledge of A.'ahic, he has for years acted a^ confidential adviser to the Hey. . . . The infurmaiion which lie is able to place before the reader is no' el ami anui'iin{;. ... A standard work on Tunis has been long required. Tl' is deficiency has been admirably supplied by the author." — Morning Past. Sent Cvitriage Free to any part of the United Kingdom on receipt of Postal Order for the amount. JOHN GRANT, 25 & 34 George IV. Bridge, Edinburgh. . i ■, 12 John Grants Bookseller^ Cefvantes — History of ttu Ingenious Gentleman^ Don Quixote of La Mancha, translated from the Spanisli by P. A. Motteux, illustrated with a portrait and 36 etchings, by M. A. Laluze, illustrator of the library edit.'on of Moliere's Works, 4 vols, large 8vo, cloth (sells £^ ir^s), £\ 15$. W. Paterson. Dyer (Thomas H.^ LL.D.) — Imitative Art, its Principles ami Progress, with Preliminary Remarks on Beauty, Sublimity, and Taste, 8vo, cloth (pub 14s), 2s. Bell & Sons, i8iS2. Junior Etching Club — Passages from Modern English Poets, Illustrated by the Junior Etching Club, 47 beautiful etchings by J. E. Millais, J. Whistler, J. Tenniel, Viscount Bury, J. Law- less, F. SmallBeld, A. J. Lewis, C. Rossiter, and other artists, 4to, cloth extra, gilt edges (pub 15s), 4s. Smith {J. Moyr) — Ancient Greek Female Costume, illus- trated by 112 Bne outline engravings and numerous smaller illustrations, with Explanatory Letterpress, and Descriptive Passages from the Works of Homer, Hesiod, Herodotus, ^schy- lus, Euripides, and other Greek Authors, printed in brown, crown 8vo, cloth elegant, red edges (pub 7s 6d), 3s. Sampson Low. Strutfs Sylva Britannia et Scotia; or, Portraits of Forest Trees Distinguished for their Antiquity, Magnitude, or Beauty, drawn from Nature, with 50 highly finished etchings, imp. u>lio, half morocco extra, gilt top, a handsome volume (pub £g 9s), £2 28. Walpole's {Horace) Anecdotes of Painting in England, with some Account of the Principal Artists, enlargeil by Rev. James Dallaway ; and Vertuc's Catalogue of EngraN-ers who have been born or resided in England, last and 1)est edition, revised with additional notes by Ralph N. Wornum, illustrated with eighty portraits of the principal artists, and woodcut portraits of the minor artists, 3 handsome vols, 8vo, cloth (pub ■Z7s), r4s 6d. Kickers. The same, 3 vols, half morocco, gi)t top, by one of the best Edinburgh binders (pub 45s), £,\ 8s. VVarren^s {Samuel) Works — Original and early editions as follows : — Miscellanies, Critical, Imaginative, and Jm-idiml, con- tributed to BlackivoocT s Afagasine, original edition, 2 vols, post 8vo, cloth (pub 24s), ss. Blackwoo^^ '855. Noiti and Then ; Through a Glass Darkly, ear'y edition, crcv/n 8vo, cloth (pub 6s), is 6d. Blackwood, 1853. Ten Thousand a Year,, early edition, with ^iotti., 3 vols, l2mo, boards, hack paper title (pub i8s), 48 6d. Blackwood, 1853. Sent Carriage Free to any part of the United Kingdom on receipt of Postal Order for the amcunit. JOHN GRiNT, 25 & 34 George IV. Bridge, Ediuhurgli. iiiiiniiii' 2S ^ 34 George IV. Bridge^ Edinburgh. 1 3 Wood {Major Herbert, R.E.)—Tht Shores of Lake Aral, with large folding maps (352 pages), 8vo, cloth (pub 14s), 2s 6d, Smith, Elder, & Co. Arnolds {Cecil) Great Sayings of Shakespeare, a Com- prehensive Index to Shakespearian Thought, Iieing a Collection of Allusions, Reflections, Images, Familiar and Descriptive Pas- sages, and Sentiments from the Poeuis and Plays of Shakespeare, Alphabetically Arranged and Cla'-.sified under Appropriate Head- ings, one handsome volume of 42.^ pages, thick 8vo, cloth (pub 7s 6d), 3s. Bickers. Arrangeid in a manner similar to Southgute's " Manjr Thoughts of Many MindH.'l This index diflers from all other books in being much more com- prehensive, while care has been taken to follow the most accurate text, and to cope, in the best inannei- possible, with the difficulties of correct classification. Bacon {Francis, Lord) — Works, both English and Latin, with an Introductory Essay, Biographical and Critical, and copious Indices, steel portrait, 2 \oh, royal 8vo, cloth (originally pub ^2 2s,) I2S, 1879. " All his works are. for expreseion as well as thought, the glory of our nation, and of all later ages.' — SHarFiKLU, Duke of Buckinghamshire. " Lord Bacon was more and more known, and his books more and more delighted in ; so that those men who had more than ordinary knowledge in human affairs, esteemed him one of the most capable spirits of that age.']^ Ht d* (forps, and his wanderings about the country; chikt uriiie perlormance lis work or, when that was slack, taking a hand at the harvest, form an interest- : cltapter of social history. 'Ine completeness of the work is cuhsiderably lanccd by detailed descriptions of the district he lived in, and of his numerous •nds and acquaintance. —/}/<oot8 (Ancient)— An Examination of the An- cient History of Ireland and Iceland, in so far as it concerns fiir Origin "• •^•- '-•'"•'■• '--^innd not the Hibernia of thp Burners History of his Own Time, irom the Restoration of Charles 11. tu the Treaty of the Peace of Utrecht, with Historical and Hiu^raphical Notes, ai.d a copious Index, com- plete in I ibick volume, impt-rinl 8vo, portrait, cloth (pub £\ 5s), 5s 6,1. " I am reading Burnet's Own Tjmes. Did you ever read that garnilou-. pleasant history'^ full of scandal, which all true history is ; no palliatives, hut al! the stark wickedness that actually gave the inomentum to national actors ; noiu- of that cursed Humcian indj^erence, so cold, and unnatural, and inhuman," &c. — Chaklks Lamii. Dante — The Divina Commedia, translated into English Verse by James Fori!, A.M., medallion frontispiece, 430 paees, crown ovo, cloth, bevelled boards (pub 12s), 2s 6d. Smith, Elder, & Co. " Mr Ford has succeeded better than might have been expected ; his rhymes are good, and his translation deserves praise for its accuracy and fidelity. Wtr cannot refrain from acknowledging th'.- many good qualities of Mr Ford's trans- lation, and his labour of love will not have been in vain, if he is able to induce thi/se who enjoy true poetry to study once more the masterpiece of that literature from whence the great founders of English poetry drew so much of their sweet- ness and power." — Athtiuruiii. Sent Carriage Free to rny part of the United Kingdom on reeeipt of Postal Order for the amount. JOHN GRANT, 25 & 34 George' IV. Bridge, Edinburgh. \\f J2^«i**^' .t(^ '4 John Grants BoookselUr^ DobsoH ( W. T.) — The Classic Poets^ their Lives and their Times, with the Epics Epitomised, 452 pages, crown 8vo, cloth (pub 9s), as 6d. Smith. Elder, & Co. C0NTBNT8.— Homer*)! Iliad^ The Lay of the Nibelungen, Cid Campcador, Dante'* JDivinaCommedia, Anoato's Orlando Furiow, Camoent' Lusiad, I'aMo's Jeniaalcin Dclivefcd, Speniier'i Fairy Qncen, Milton's Paradise Lost, Milton's Paradise Regained. English Literature: A Study of the Prologue and Epilogue in English Literature, from Shakespeare to Drvden, by G. S. B., c^own 8vo, cloth (pub 5s), is 6d. iCegan Paul, 1884. Will no doubt prove useful to writers undenalcing more amUtious researches into the %irider domains of dranuitic or social histor)-. Johnson {^Doctor) — His Friends and his Critics^ by George Rirkbeck Hill, D.C.L., crown 8vo, cloth (pub 8s), as. Smith, Elder, & Co. "The public now reaps the advantage of Dr Hill's researches in a roost readable volume. Seldom has a pleasanter commentary been written on a literary masterpiece. . . . 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"The Essays are seven in number, — Holidays, Work, Success, Toleration, Rest, Growing Old, and the Wrong Side of the StufT.—themes on which the author discourses with bright and healthy vigour, good itense, and good taste."— Standard. " We most sincerely trust that this book may nnd its way into many an English household. It cannot fail to instil lessons of manliness." — IVcstmmster Ktrvievv, Selkirk (/ B.) — Ethics and ^Esthetics of Modern Poetry^ crown 8vo, cloth gilt (pub 7s), 2s. Smith, Elder, & Co. Sketches from Shady Places, being Sketches from the c;riminal and Umtf f ;iasses, by Thor Fredur, crown 8vo, cloth (pub 6s), IS. Smith, Eldpr, & Co. " Descriptions of the criminal a>id semi-criminal (if such a word maybe coined) clo-sses, which are ful' of power, sometimes of a disagreeable kind." — Atkeiurum. Sent Cat riage Free to any part of the United Kingdon on receipt of Postal Ord^r for the amount. JOHN GRANT, 25 & 34 George IV. Bridge, Edinburgh. give a dental 2j &* J4 George IV. Bridge^ Edinburgh. «5 By tlie Authoress of " The Land o' the Leal." Nairne'8 (Baroness) Life and Sonffs, with a Memoir, and Poems of Caroline Oliphant the Younger, edited by Dr Charles Rogers, portrait and other Ulustrations, crown 8yo, cloth (pub 5s) Griffin " TYa% publication ui a good Mrvice to the memory of an excellent and gifted lady, and 10 all lovers of Scottish Song." — Scottman. Osslan's Poems, translated by Macpherson, 24mo, best red cloth, gilt (pub as 6d) A dainty pocket edition. Perthshire— Woods, Forests, and Estates of Perthshire, with Sketches of the Principal Families of the County, by Thomas Hunter, Editor of the Perthshire Consti- tutional and Journal^ illustrated with jo wood engravings, ciown 8vo (564 pp.)) cloth (pub 12s 6d) Perth " Altogether a choice and mo«t valuable addition to the County Histories of Scotland." — Gitugow Daily MmI. Duncan (John, Scotch Weaver and Botanist) — Life of, with Sketches of his Friends and Notices of the Times, by Wm. Jolly, F.R.S.E., H.M. Inspector of Schools, etched portrait, crown 8vo, cloth (pub os) Kegan Paul "We must refer the reader to the boolc itself for the many quaint traits of character, and the minute personal descriptions, which, taken t«>gether, seem to give a life-like presentation of this humble philosopher. . . . The dental notices which the work contains of the weaver caste, many inci- the workman's £ S. D. 0 3 6 016 % i 060 040 etprit dc cor^, and his wanderings about the country, either in the performance or his work or, when that was slack, taking a hand at tne harvest, form an interest- ing chapter of social history. The completeness of the work is considerably ennanced by detailed description* of the district he lived in, and of his numerous friends and acquaintance."— .4/A«MM. Scots (Ancient)--An Examination of the An- cient History of Ireland and Iceland, in so far as it concerns thf Origin ot the Scots ; Ireland not the Hibernia of the Ancients ; Interpolations in Bede's Ecclesiastical History and other Ancient Annals affecting the Early History of Scotland and Ireland — the three Essays in one volume, crown 8vo, cloth (pub 4s) Edinburgh, 1883 0 2 0 The first of the above treatises is mainly taken up with an investigation of the early History of Ireland and .Iceland, in order to ascertain which has the better claim to be considered the original country of the Scots. In the second and third an attempt is made to show that Iceland was the ancient Hibernia, and the_ country from which the Scots came to Scotland ; and further, contain a review of tne evidence furnished by the more genuine of the early British .\nnals against the idea that Ireland was the ancient Scoti-t. IVlagic and Astrology— Grant (James)— The Mysteries of all Nations: Rise imd Progress of Superstition, Laws against and Trials of Witches, Ancient and Mi)dern Delusions, together with Strange Customs, Fables, and Tales relating to Mythology, Miracles, Poets, and Superstition, Demonology, Magic and Astrology, Trials by Ordeal, Super- stition in tne Nineteenth Century, &c., I thick vol, 8vo, cloth (pubi2s6d) 1880 026 .\n interesting work on the subject of Superstition, valuable alike to archseo- logists and general readers. It is chiefly the result of antiquarian research and actual observation during a period of nearly forty years. Sent Carriage Free to any part of the United Kingdom on receipt of Postal Order for the amount. JOHN GRANT. 25 & 34 George IV. Bridge, Edinburgh. i6 John Grants Bookseller. \\ A Storytfthe Shetland Ishs. Saxby {Jessie M., author of'Daala-Mist,'' ^c,)--Rock- Boumi, a Story of the Shetland Isles, second edition, revised, crown 8vo, cloth (pub as), 6tl. Edinburgh, 1877. "Th« life I have tried to depict ia the life I remember twenty yean ago, when the inlands were far behind the rest of Britain in all that goes to make up modem cWWMAxon."— Extract /mn Pr^mct. Burn {R. Scott)— The Practical Directory for the Im- prowtmttU of Landtd Property, Rural and Suburban, and the Economic Cultivation of its Fanns (the most valuable work on the subject), plates and woodcuts, 2 vols, 4to, cloth (pub £'i 3s), 15s, Paterson. Burnefs Treatise on Paintings illustrated by ijo Etchings from celebrated pictures uf the Italian, Venetian, Flemish, Dutch, and English Schools, also woodcuts, thick 4to, half morocco, gilt top (pub £^ los), £2 as. 754* Costumes of all Nations, Ancient and Modem, exhibiting the Dresses and Habits of all Classes, Male and Female, from the Earliest Historical Records to the Nineteenth Century, bv Albert Kre^schmer and Dr Rohrbach, 104 coloured plates displaying nearly 3000 fidMength figures, complete in one nand- some volume, 410, half morocco (pub £^ 4s), 45s, Sotheran. Dryden's Dramatic Works, Library Edition, with Notes and Life by Sir Walter Scott, Bart., edited by George Saints- bury, portrait and plates, 8 vols, 8vo, cloth (pub £\ 4s), £\ iqy, Paterson. Lessing's {Drf.) Ancient Oriental Carpet Patterns, after Pictures and Originals of the 15th and l6tn Centuries, 35 plates (size 30 X 14 in.), beautifully coloured after the originals, i vol, royal folio, in portfolio (pub j^3 38), 3is, Sotheran. The most beautiful Work on the " Stcdtly Homes of England." Nas/i's Mansions of England in the Olden Time, 104 Lithographic Views faithfully reproduced from the originals, with new and complete history of each Mansion, by Anderson, 4 vols in 2, imperial 410, cloth extra, gilt edges (pub £6 6s), £2 los, Sotheran. Richardson's {Samuel) Works, Library Edition, with Biogr.iphiral Criticism by Leslie .Stephen, portrait, 12 vols, 8vo, cloth extra, impression strictly limited to 750 copies (pub £6 6s), £2 ss, London. Sent Carriage Free to any part of the United Kingdom on receipt of Postal Order for the amount. JOHN GRANT, 25 & 34 George IV. Bridge, Edinburgh. ( t.