AND OTHER HUNTING ADVENTURES 55 



nally designated as the tide- water terminus of the 

 road, and had its brief era of prosperity and specu- 

 lation in consequence; but now that the plan has 

 been changed it has been reduced to a mere way 

 station, and has relapsed into the dullest kind of 

 dullness. 



From here I staged across the divide to New 

 Westminster, on the Frazer river, the home of Mr. 

 J. C. Hughs, who had invited me there to hunt 

 Rocky Mountain goats with him. I was grieved 

 beyond measure, however, to learn on my arrival that 

 he was dangerously ill, and went at once to his 

 house, but he was unable to see me. He sank rapidly 

 from the date of his first illness, died two days after 

 my arrival, and I therefore found myself in a strange 

 land, with no friend or acquaintance to whom I 

 could go for information or advice. 



My first object, therefore, was to find a guide to take 

 me into the mountains, and although I found several 

 pretended sportsmen, I could hear of no one who had 

 ever killed a goat, except poor Hughs, and a Mr. 

 Fannin, who had formerly lived there, but had lately 

 moved away, so of course no one knew where I could 

 get a guide. Several business men, of whom I asked 

 information, inquired at once where I was from, and 

 on learning that I was an American, simply said ' ' I 

 don' t know, ' ' and were, or at least pretended to be, 

 too busy to talk with me. They seemed to have no 

 use for people from this side of the boundary line, 

 and this same ill-feeling toward my Nation (with a 

 big N) was shown me in other places, and on various 

 occasions, while in the province. I found, however, 

 one gracious exception, in New Westminster, in the 



