RICHNESS OF THE CARIBOO MINES. 3G9 



But these eccentricities are only discovered by expe- 

 riment, and many a miner works for weeks to sink 

 his shaft of thirty or forty feet, to find nothing at the 

 end of his labour. His neighbour above or below 

 may perhaps be making £1,000 a day, but the creek 

 ran not through his claim in these past ages when 

 it washed down the auriferous debris. More for- 

 tunate men, however, who, in mining phrase, '' hit 

 a streak," often make large fortunes in Cariboo in 

 an incredibly short space of time. 



The extraordinary yield of the Cariboo mines 

 may be inferred from the fact that in 1861 the 

 whole of the colonies of British Columbia and 

 Vancouver Island were almost entirely supported 

 by the gold obtained from Antler Creek alone ; and 

 from that time to the present year, or for four years 

 in succession, William's Creek has also alone sus- 

 tained more than 16,000 people, some of whom 

 have left the country with large fortunes. And yet 

 William's Creek is a mere narrow ravine, worked for 

 little more than two miles of its length, and that 

 in the roughest manner. The miners are destitute 

 of steam power, and many requisites for efficient 

 mining ; and all that has been done hitherto has 

 been mere scratching in the dark. 



Out of many instances of the wonderful richness 

 of these diggings it may be mentioned that Cunning- 

 ham's Claim yielded, on an average, nearly 2,000 

 dollars, or £400 a day, during the whole season ; 

 and another, DiUon's Claim, gave the enormous 

 amount of 102 lbs. of gold, or nearly £4,000 in one 



