164 THE SEA. 



nigged mountain-paths, through swamps and forests. Consequently, a large number had 

 to spend the winter in idleness; and in the spring, in many cases, their resources were 

 exhausted. Many became tired of the colony ; " roughing it " was not always the 

 pleasant kind of thing they had imagined, and so they went down to California, or left 

 for home. Others were stuck fast in the colony, and many suffered severe privations; 

 although, so long as they could manage to live on salmon alone, they could obtain 

 plenty from the Indians, who hawked it about the streets for a shilling or two shillings 

 apiece the latter for a very large fish. The son of a baronet at one time might be 

 seen breaking stones for a living in Victoria ; and unless men had a very distinct 

 calling, profession, or trade, they had to live on their means or have a veiy rough 

 time of it. 



These remarks are not made to deter adventurous spirits from going abroad; but we 

 would advise them to " look well before they leap." But how utterly unfitted for mining- 

 work were the larger part of the young men who had travelled so far, only to be disappointed. 

 There was no doubt of the gold being there: two hundred ounces of the precious metal 

 have been " washed out" in an eight hours' " shift" (a " shift" is the same as a " watch" 

 on board ship) ; and this was kept up for many days in succession, the miners working day and 

 night. But that mine had been three years in process of development, and only one of the 

 original proprietors was among the lucky number of shareholders. A day or so before the 

 first gold had been found "struck" is the technical expression his credit was exhausted, 

 and he had begged vainly for flour, &c., to enable him to live and work. The ordinary 

 price of a very ordinaiy meal was two dollars; and it will be seen that, unless employed, 

 or simply travelling for pleasure, it was a ruinous place to stop in. Fancy, then, the 

 condition of perhaps as many as 4,000 unemployed men, out of a total of 7,000 men, on 

 the various creeks, a good half of whom were of the middle and upper classes at home. 

 But for one happy fact, that beef which, as the miners said, packed itself into the mines 

 (in other words, the cattle were driven in from a distance of hundreds of miles) was 

 reasonably cheap, hundreds of them must have starved. Everything from flour, tea, 

 sugar, bacon, and beans, to metal implements and machinery had to be packed there on 

 the backs of mules, and cost from fifty cents and upwards per pound for the mere cost of 

 transportation, Tea was ten shillings a pound, flour and sugar a dollar a pound, and so on. 

 Those who fancy that gold-mining, and especially deep gravel-mining, as in Cariboo, is 

 play-work, may be told that it is perhaps the hardest, as it is certainly the most risky 

 and uncertain, work in the world; and that it requires machinery, expensive tools, &c., 

 which, in places like Cariboo, cost enormous sums to supply. If labour was to be employed 

 good practical miners, carpenters, &c. (much of the machinery was of wood) received, 

 at that period, ten to sixteen dollars per day. This digression may be pardoned, as the 

 sea is so intimately bound up with questions of emigration. Apart from this, from 

 personal observation, the writer knows that quite a proportion of miners have been sailors, 

 and, in many cases, deserted their ships. In the " early days" of Australia, California, 

 and British Columbia, this was eminently the case. 



A large proportion of the sailors in the Royal Navy have, or will at some period, 

 pass some time on the Pacific station, in which case, they will inevitably go to Vancouver 



