86 ARRIVAL AT THE COAST 



Government Stores in Victoria. Being without money, I went, 

 the next day, to the Hudson's Bay Company's headquarters and 

 interviewed Chief Factor Graham who was then in charge and 

 said that I wished for some money to enable me to pay my pas- 

 sage through to Ottawa. He looked up and said: "Are you one 

 of the men who left Edmonton early in September?" I told him 

 that I was and he said: "Where are the clerks that started with 

 you; did they not get through?" I told him no. "Well, how 

 did you get through?" "We determined to risk it and here I 

 am." "And where is your mate?" "Oh, he has gone down the 

 Skeena and will be here shortly." He drew a long breath and 

 then said, "Well, that is the first time that an employee of the 

 Government accomplished what a Hudson's Bay Company's 

 clerk failed in." 



The evening before we sailed for San Francisco, one of my 

 friends turned up to go with me and the other came to bid us 

 good-bye. And he said, with tears in his eyes, that all his money 

 was gone and he was unable to go with us. And yet, he said, he 

 had not seen his mother in seventeen years. Three years after, 

 I saw him at Cache Creek where he was a man-of-all-work at the 

 hotel and hardly had a rag on his back. This was the fate of 

 many miners that I met in the early days. 



Christmas was spent in Victoria, and Johnston, my friend, 

 the miner, and myself, reached San Francisco in due time and 

 the only thing I can remember, that took place there, was my 

 exchanging gold with a Jew for paper, and he, with a very sober 

 face, said that there was four per cent discount, and I, being 

 a tenderfoot, was about to give it when the miner said : "Look here, 

 old fellow, it is you who gives that discount." This was perfectly 

 true. It may be asked why I was changing gold for paper. The 

 reason is very simple. The Union Pacific had been open just 

 four years and the road was infested with robbers and confidence 

 men, and no man's life was safe, and so I changed my gold for 

 paper and, at the hotel, before I started for the east, I put the bills 

 under the soles of my feet and then put on my socks and from that 

 time till we reached Ottawa, the chief part of my money was 

 under the soles of my feet, except what little I kept out to spend 



