74 A SPORTSMAN'S EDEN. 



could not. ' Washing for gold, that's their little 

 game, and they thought you wanted to collect 

 the tax ; that's why they would not talk,' said S. ; 

 adding, ' if we had been after the tax, we would 

 soon have got them to tip up, though.' ' How 

 so, S. ?' ' Why, squire, we should have just 

 taken the biggest Johnny and tied him up by his 

 pig-tail to a bough of the handiest tree, and the 

 gold would have come out before his hair did.' 

 Hard this, I thought, on the ingenuous Johnny ; 

 but S. had been a local policeman, and knew John 

 Chinaman well, and told me that some of the 

 most cruel murders he had ever heard of had 

 been committed by Celestials. What had S. not 

 been this gray old man, with good manners 

 and universal knowledge, who quoted ' Horace ' 

 correctly, quoted, too, from the Greek Testament, 

 wrote distinctly passable verses for local news- 

 papers, was well up in military history, and 

 cooked my bacon and beans as well as he talked 

 Thompson River Indian, or Similkameen ? I 

 used to sit over the camp fire and wonder at the 

 old man's memory, as he talked of what he had 

 learnt at ' the shop ' in the days before he got 

 his commission as a ' gunner,' before, too, he lost 

 all he was worth, and more, on the racecourse, 

 and came out here to marry a Thompson Eiver 

 Indian woman, rear a dusky brood, drive a pack- 



