240 Sport and Life. 



the first white men in the country, fighting and squabbling over a 

 heap of glittering stone which had been there since the world was 

 created, and of which the surrounding mountains contained a 

 limitless supply ! And not only palavering and chattering and 

 hissing at each other like angry geese, but a few months later 

 some of us were shooting each other down in cold blood ! What 

 were, one might well ask, the thoughts of our quaint audience, 

 silent natives, who, all but naked, squatted on the floor of the 

 court-house, smoking countless cigarettes made of brown paper, 

 and listening with incomparable patience to the proceedings, of 

 which, of course, they did not understand a single word ? 



The losing side determined to appeal against the decisions to the 

 Supreme Court of British Columbia, sitting in Victoria. Important 

 business, in connection with my land concessions, which called me 

 to England, made it impossible for me to give my personal attention 

 to this part of the fight. Before leaving Victoria for England I 

 intrusted the defence to the same competent lawyer whose services 

 I desired to secure for the first trials in the lower court. In a 

 series of interviews, I put him in possession of all the facts in 

 connection with the involved appeals, and paid him his 100 guinea 

 fee.* Unfortunately, a more important case before the Supreme 

 Court of Canada, sitting in Ottawa, on the other side of the broad 

 North American continent, in which he was playing an important 

 role, obliged him at the last moment to remain in Ottawa, at the 

 very time our appeals came on in Victoria. Another counsel, who 

 naturally knew but little of our cases, took his place. The appeals 

 heard by the late Chief Justice Begbie, than whom no more 

 respected judge has graced the bench in any part of the Empire, 

 and one whom in later years I was privileged to count among my 

 warm personal friends, decided three of the four cases against us, 

 upholding only one of Gold Commissioner Kelly's decisions. It 

 was a terribly unexpected blow which affected one man most 



* In Canada a client deals direct with counsel, the intervention of a solicitor 

 being unnecessary. 



