Appendix. 38 1 



very heart of the range, and rising between 6oooft. and joooft. above the 

 sea level. From this mountain, known as Old Baldy, almost every gold- 

 bearing stream in the Caribou district takes its rise, and a dozen or 

 more of them whose names have been familiarly associated with the 

 province for thirty-five years radiate from the hub of a wheel. 



The rich discoveries of gold made in 1861 and 1862 in Antler, 

 Keithley, William, and Lightning Creeks electrified the world, and the 

 great rush in 1862 and 1863 followed, in which tens of thousands how 

 many nobody knows of adventurous spirits participated. The gold found 

 was coarse, and in William Creek and some of the tributaries it was easy of 

 access, and was deposited in enormous quantities. The source of the 

 yellow stream of the precious metal which extended nearly 500 miles to the 

 lower reaches of the Fraser River had thus been found, and great fortunes 

 were made in the brief period of a few weeks by some of the more fortunate 

 claim holders. 



But the golden days of Caribou were short-lived. With the exception of 

 a few shallow places on some of the streams named, it became apparent 

 very soon to every miner that the bulk of the precious metal contained in 

 the placer deposits radiating from Bald Mountain would have to be won by 

 hard labour, at considerable expense, and be attended with general risk. 

 Deep gravel mining there was accompanied with many drawbacks that 

 deep gravel mining in California had not experienced. The summers in 

 Caribou are short. They begin toward the latter end of May ; they close 

 at the beginning of October. The rest of the year the snow flies and the 

 ice king reigns. When the " Chinook " wind comes up the valleys from 

 the south in the latter part of April, it sweeps over a blanket of snow from 

 8ft. to 1 2ft. thick lying over the face of the country, and which the dense 

 forest timber shields everywhere up to the limit of timber growth on the 

 flanks of the higher peaks in the range. The melting of such a mass of 

 snow naturally lasts several weeks and saturates the ground with water, 

 and with this the deep-gravel miner of Caribou in the sixties found it 

 impossible to cope. In the early sixties it cost a dollar a pound for 

 transportation of miners' supplies, provisions, and machinery from the 

 seaboard to the mining camps easiest of access. Capital was scarce, and 

 the natural resources of the country were inadequate. 



As a gold mining country for the poor man Caribou, therefore, soon 

 began to decline. In 1863 while William Creek was still in its prime as 

 a gold producer the exodus began. Tens of thousands of disappointed 

 and "disgruntled" miners left it. By the close of the 'sixties the entire 

 mining population of Caribou had fallen off to about 2500, and the annual 

 yield was only a tithe of what it had been in previous years. 



