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Chronicles of Canada Volume 23 - The Cariboo Trail: A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia

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<h3> CHAPTER VI </h3> <h4> QUESNEL AND KAMLOOPS </h4> The walls of the river lowered and widened, the current slackened, and the surviving canoes and rafts were presently gliding peacefully down a smooth stream. That night the Overlanders slept dead with weariness; but a fearful depression rested on the company. Gold had begun to collect its toll, and the price appalled every soul. Who would be the next? How soon would the unknown river turn west and south? Where was Fort George? What perils yet lay between the fort and the gold camp? As the heavy mists lifted at daybreak, the travellers observed that the river was narrowing again and that the wooded banks had begun to fly past very swiftly. There was no mistaking the signs. They were approaching more rapids. But the trick of guiding the craft down rapids had now been learned; so the flotilla rode the furious waters unharmed for fifteen miles. {81} It was almost dark when canoes and rafts swung round a curve in the river and saw a flag waving above the little walled fur-post of Fort George. The tired wanderers were welcomed in by clerks too amazed to speak, while a howling chorus of husky-dogs set up their serenade. A young Englishman, who had joined the Overlanders at St Paul, died from the effects of exposure a few minutes after being carried into the fort. Next morning the body was rolled in blankets, placed in a canoe, and buried under a rude wooden cross, with stones piled above the grave to prevent the ravaging of huskies and wolves. The chief factor was away, but the young clerks in charge sent Indians along to pilot the Overlanders through the rapids below Fort George, known as the most dangerous on the Fraser. These rapids, it will be recalled, had wrecked Alexander Mackenzie and had almost cost Simon Fraser his life. But the treasure-seekers did not have to go as far south as Alexandria, where Mackenzie had turned back. With guides who knew the waters, they ran the rapids below Fort George safely, and moored at Quesnel, the entrance to Cariboo, on the 11th of September—four months after they had left Canada. {82} Quesnel was at this time a rude settlement of perhaps a dozen log shacks—chiefly bunkhouses and provision-stores. North of Yale the Cariboo Road had not yet been opened, and all provisions had been brought in from the lower Fraser by pack-horse and dog-train at enormous cost and risk. Food sold at extortionate prices. A meal cost two dollars and fifty cents, for beans, bacon, and coffee. Salmon, of course, was cheap. Fortunately, there was little whisky; so, though tattered miners were everywhere in the woods, order was maintained without vigilance committees. On one spectacle the far-travelled ragged Overlanders feasted their tired eyes. They saw miners everywhere along the banks of creeks washing gold. But there were more gold-seekers than claims, and those without claims were full of complaints and fears for the winter. They declared the country was over-rated and a humbug. The question was how 'to get out' to Victoria. Overlanders, who had tramped across the breadth of a continent, did not relish the prospect, as one Yankee miner described it, of 'hoofing it five hundred miles farther.' Some of the disappointed Overlanders floated on down to Alexandria, where they sold their rafts and took jobs on the {83} government road which was being constructed along the canyon. This ensured them safety from starvation for the winter at least. Other Overlanders followed these first pioneers 'the plains across.' And we have seen that some of those who had crossed the prairie with the first party had fallen behind. These stragglers did not reach Yellowhead Pass till the first week of September. They were entirely out of food; but they had matches, and each box of fifty bought a huge salmon from the Shuswaps. Some of the men pushed ahead, built a raft, and launched it on the Fraser. The raft ripped on a rock in midstream and stuck there at an angle of forty-five degrees. Money, tools, food, and clothing slithered into the tow of the rapids, while the men clung in desperation to the upper railing of the wreck. One man let go and dropped into the water. Swimming and drifting and rolling over and over, he gained the shore, and hurried back to the pass with word of the accident. Friends, accompanied by Indians, came in canoes to the rescue, and, by means of ropes, every man was brought off the wrecked raft alive. But the party now stood in a more desperate predicament than ever, for lack of food and {84} clothing. The Shuswaps saved the whites from starvation. They took the white men to a pool in the Fraser, where salmon, exhausted from the long run up the river, could be speared or clubbed by the boat-load. And while some of the men chopped down trees to build dugout canoes, others speared, cleaned, and dried the salmon. Night and day they worked, and forgot sleep in their desperate haste. At length they launched their craft on the Fraser. On the way down the dangerous canyon they saw the wrecked canoes of those who had gone before. The tenth day after leaving Yellowhead Pass they reached Fort George. Their story has been told by Mrs MacNaughton, whose husband was of the party. They arrived at Fort George mostly barefoot, coatless, and trousers and shirts in tatters. Their hair and beards were long and unkempt. It is supposed that they must have lost the salmon in some of the rapids, or else the supply was insufficient; for they were so weak from hunger that they had to be carried into the fort. They arrived at Quesnel a month after the first Overlanders, when the snow was too deep in the mountains for prospecting or mining. The majority of this party also took work on the government road. {85} Meanwhile, how had fared that band of the Overlanders who had gone over the hills south from the pass in search of the upper branches of the Thompson? A Shuswap accompanied them as guide, and for a few days there was a well-defined game-trail. Then the trail meandered off into a dense forest of hemlock and windfall, which had to be cut almost every mile of the way. They did not average six miles a day; but they finally came to the steep bank of a wild river flowing south which they judged must be a branch of the Thompson. The mountains were so steep that it was impossible to proceed farther with horses and oxen; so they abandoned these in the woods, and cut trees for rafts. For seven days they ran rapid after rapid. One of the rafts stranded on a rock and remained for two days before companions came to the rescue. At another point a canoe was smashed in midstream. The crew struggled to a slippery rock and hung to the ledge. A man named Strachan attempted to swim ashore to signal distress to those above. They saw him ride the waves. Then a roll of angry waters swept over him and he passed out of sight. His companions clung to the rock till another canoe came shooting down-stream, when lines {86} were hoisted to the castaways, and they were hauled ashore. Where the Clearwater comes into the Thompson they found the fur-trader's horse-trail and tramped the remaining hundred miles overland south to Kamloops. On the last lap of their terrible march all were so exhausted they could scarcely drag themselves forward. Some would lie down and sleep, then creep on a few miles. About twenty miles from the mouth of the Thompson they came to a field of potatoes planted by some rancher of Kamloops. The starving Overlanders could scarcely credit their eyes. No one occupied the windowless log cabin; but there was the potato patch—an oasis of food in a desert of starvation. They paused long enough at the cabin to boil a great kettleful and to feast ravenously. This gave them strength to tramp on to Kamloops. We saw that the Irish mother, Mrs Shubert, with her two children, accompanied this party. The day after reaching Kamloops she gave birth to a child. Did the Overlanders find the gold which each man's rainbow hopes had dreamed? They had followed the rainbow over the ends of earth. Was the pot of gold at the end of {87} the rainbow? You will find an occasional Overlander passing the sunset of his days in quiet retreat at Yale or Hope or Quesnel or Barkerville. He does not wear evidence of great earthly possessions, though he may refer wistfully to the golden age of those long-past adventurous days. The leaders who survived became honoured citizens of British Columbia. Few came back to the East. They passed their lives in the wild, free, new land that had given them such harsh experiences. {88} <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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