MISREPRESENTATIONS OF THE COLONY. 391 



It is far otherwise with British Columbia. She 

 probably equals California in mineral wealth, but, 

 being as it were a mere continuation of the Eocky 

 Mountains to the Pacific, a sea of hills, a land of 

 mountains and forests, or shingly swells and terraces 

 covered with bunch-grass, the farmer looks in vain for 

 rich alluvial valleys. No colony has been more mis- 

 represented than this. 



In former times, when a preserve for fur-bearing 

 animals under the sway of the Hudson's Bay Com- 

 pany, it was reputed to be "little better than a 

 waste and howling wilderness, wherein half-famished 

 beasts of prey waged eternal war with a sparse 

 population of half-starved savages ; where the cold 

 w^as more than Arctic, and the drought more than 

 Saharan ; " and that — to quote the words of the 

 Chancellor of the Exchequer in the House of Com- 

 mons a few years ago — " these territories were bound 

 by frost and banked by fog, and woe betide any 

 unfortunate individual who might be so far diverted 

 from the path of prudence as to endeavour to settle 

 in those parts." (^) 



But the accounts sent to this country soon after 

 the first rush of emigrants to the land of gold, dif- 

 fered widely from the old story. It was now as 

 much the interest of speculators and jDroperty-holders 

 to attract emigration by exaggerated praise of the 

 colony, as it had formerly been that of the Hudson's 

 Bay Company to repel it, and keep their possession 



(^) Vide " Prize Essay on British Columbia," by the Rev. E. C. L. 

 Brown, M.A., Minister of St. Mary's, Lilloet. 



