Running a Sawmill and a Store Up Country. 281 



nevertheless the sergeant's reply, when I asked him for what 

 purpose those inch boards were required at the fort, must have seemed 

 of grim significance to the invalids lying there in plain hearing. 

 " Oh," said the sergeant, " the doc. told me that if the men 

 were looking bad, I should bring enough lumber along to bury 

 them with, for they have more dead men than lumber at the 

 fort, and whipsawing ain't healthy this weather." 



The sergeant wasn't out very far, one of the men, we heard, 

 was dead when the post was reached, and the other one " used 

 up the balance of the lumber " a day or two later, as the driver 

 laconically wrote to one of my men. 



The fever epidemic came nigh making also me a customer for 

 my lumber. It attacked me quite suddenly, while on a long ride, 

 and, being unprovided with blankets, I was laid low in the only 

 human habitation in that part of the Columbia lake country. This 

 was a little whiskey den just then frequented by drunken 

 freighters, gamblers, and " toughs." It consisted of a log shanty, 

 i.e., one room, the floor of which was unboarded and reeking with 

 tobacco juice, and other even worse filth. There was no bed or table 

 or chair in the place, everybody " going to.bed " on the floor. The 

 bar consisted of boards laid across supports, and the seats were 

 empty casks. There, in a corner of this den, which was in 

 full possession of drunken men, I lay for days, huddled in 

 a blanket or two which the owner had lent me. Those wha 

 have read the first book ever written on Kootenay, by the witty 

 authors of "Two in Nor\vay,"* may remember the description 

 the authors give of how they found me lying on the floor in that 

 miserable den. I would not mention this highly uninteresting 

 circumstance, but for an amusing error into which these writers 

 fell. The only adornment on the walls of the room was a horse's 

 jawbone, nailed to one of the logs over the bar. On pieces of 

 paper nailed up to the left of it was the word " No," and on the 

 other side of it the word "Here," the whole reading, of course, 



* " British Columbia in 1887 ; or, a Ramble in British Columbia." By Lee 

 and Clutterbuck. Longmans, 1888. 



