Mr. John Eohertss lleporU 21 



of the city by themselves. They spend but very little money, and most 

 of their trade is done wit h one another. 



On Monday, through the kindness of Mr. Dunsmuir, 

 Nanaimo and a special train was placed at our service, to enable us 

 Wellington. to go and see the coal mines at Nanaimo and 

 Wellington, abnat 90 miles north. We stopped the 

 train at several points, and drove up the country to inspect the land. 

 The Indians hav(; some very tine land on their reservation ground. We 

 also saw a lot of good sheep. Eeaching Wellington, we visited several 

 of the collieries which are owned and worked bv the Dunsmuir 

 Colliery Co. They started working in 1871, and now they have an 

 output of 350,000 tons annually, most of which is shipped for San 

 Francisco. Returning to Nanaimo, w-e visited the works of tho 

 Nanaimo Colliery Co. They have five or six pits about three miles 

 apart. The coal is worked under the Gulf, but the colliers are never 

 troubled with water. The Mayor of Nanaimo — A. Haslam, Esq., M.P. 

 — kindly drove us round, and entertained us. We left Nanaimo at 6 

 a.m., and crossed bn^k to Vancouver, which we reached by 11. 



The climate of V^ancouver is said to be delightful, and very much 

 like the climate of the South of England. They have but very little 

 snow at Vancouver, and when it comes it soon melts away. 



We started on our return journey by taking the train to a 

 Harrison, small station called Harrison. There we had an experience 



that none of us wanted repeated. In a small canoe, seven 

 of us were taken some four miles up the Eraser Itiver. We had to 

 cross several whirlpools, and to do this with our overladen and frail 

 boat was full of real peril. 



However, we got to land safe, and drove to Chilliwack, 

 ChilliwacJc. a little town about a mile from the river, in a valley, 

 surrounded on all sides by high and towering mountains. 

 We inspected several farms, among them being a bop farm, where the 

 crop had just been picked. It averaged a ton to th.; acre. The pasture 

 in this neighbourhood seemed to be very rich and strong. In one 

 dairy farm that we visited all the milk was made into Cheddar cheese. 

 We tasted it, and found it to be of excellent quality — tjuite as good, 

 if not better than some made in England. This farmer s plan was to 

 stop making cheese when butter got to be worth more than 25 cents (Is,) 

 per lb. He informed us tliat his cows averaged him .£12 per head per year. 

 He had sold from his farm 300 tons of timothy hay, which was of excel- 

 lent quality and w^ell harvested. He had pressed it by horse power, 

 and sold it to go by boat to Vancouver. This man has grown hay on 

 the same field, unmanured, for 18 years, and his crops average 3 

 to 4 tons an acre. On this farm we saw a grand crop of green 

 corn, which w as estimated to weigh 35 tons to the acre. It was from 

 8 ft. to 9 ft. in height. This crop was put through a chaff-cutter 

 and cut into inch lengths, and made into ensilage for the cattle. 

 This farm, in my opinion, looked more like a paying concern than 

 any that I saw. It \\as 400 acres in extent, 50 of which had not 

 yet been cleared. Land is rather high in this district. They ask as 

 ^uch as S150 (.£30^ an acre, but no doubt it can be bought for less 





