380 Sport and Life. 



as it should, the North-west Territory, letting the Rocky Mountains 

 form the separating line of two new Territories, as they do further south. 

 Up to 1897 this western trans-montane portion of the North-west Territory 

 was a country that possessed neither settlements, resident population, law 

 officers, postal facilities, or roads of any sort whatever. The spot where 

 to-day stands that collection of some hundreds of log shanties known as 

 Dawson City, was, until the famous Canadian surveyor Ogilvie's determina- 

 tion of the i4ist meridian, actually claimed by the United States authorities 

 as part of Alaska. 



Of the Caribou mines it is necessary to give some account in 

 consequence of the renewed activity evinced by European and American 

 capital in the exploitation of its once famous auriferous treasures. 



We have already heard that from 1858 to 1863 British Columbia was 

 the centre of the world's attention as a gold field. In the first-named year 

 the Fraser River excitement broke out, and the restless adventurers that had 

 drifted to the Pacific States and territories rushed recklessly to the new 

 El Dorado, which had then been developed on the bars and benches of the 

 lower Fraser, between Forts Hope and Yale. Pushing their way-up the 

 narrow defile known as Big Canyon, by which means the great river gains 

 a passage through the lofty Cascade Mountains to the sea, the more 

 venturous of this army of gold seekers entered the interior of the province 

 in open defiance of the opposition of the native tribes which flocked to the 

 river to challenge their right to pass. Boston bar, Lytton, Lillooet, the 

 lower Thompson River, Big Creek, Soda Creek, and the mouth of the 

 Quesnelle were in turn reached and explored. At this mouth of the 

 Quesnelle the golden trail, which had been followed up the valley of the 

 Fraser, left the main stream, and the greater part of the vanguard of gold 

 hunters turned their faces towards the mountains, which the increasing 

 coarseness of the gold found indicated to the quick-witted miners as the 

 source of the supply of the precious metal of which they were in search. 

 The main body of the pioneer gold seekers of the district that subsequently 

 became famous under the name of Caribou thus left the main valley of the 

 Fraser at Quesnelle mouth and entered the spur of the Rockies known as 

 the Blue Mountains by way of the Quesnelle river. Another lot of 

 prospectors who had pushed higher up the Fraser valley, finding the river 

 bars getting poorer in gold, left it at the mouth of the Cottonwood and 

 entered the Blue range through the tributaries of that stream Willow 

 Creek and Lightning Creek. 



As all roads lead to Rome, so the various valleys which the pioneers 

 of Caribou adopted to enter the Blue Mountains all led to one common ' 

 point, or rather peak a cone-like, bald-topped mountain situated in the 



