1906-7. TRANSACTIONS. 21 



San Francisco newspapers of the time, the excitement there sur- 

 passed that on the Atlantic sea-board in 1849 when the stampede 

 to Cahfornia began. In three months in 1858 it was estimated 

 that 23,000 men left San Francisco by sea and about 8,000 by 

 land. These men, or some of them, brought plenty of money with 

 them, as much as $2,000,000 in coin being deposited in the Hud- 

 son's Bay Company's safe at Victoria at one time. This was the 

 only safe in the country, and the treasurer of the company refused 

 to count the money offered to him as deposit. It was sealed up 

 in bags by the owners, and when they wanted money their bags 

 were handed to them, they took out what they needed and re- 

 turned the bag to the safe. 



An attempt was made by the Americans to make Whatcom, 

 on Puget Sound, the point of departure for the mines, and much 

 money was made and lost speculating in land there. But to 

 reach the Fraser a road had to be cut through a dense forest 

 almost tropical in its vegetation, and the natural current of the 

 traffic remained with Victoria. Governor James Douglas re- 

 refused to allow the American vessels to enter the Fraser, and as 

 the steamer accommodation made available by the Hudson's 

 Bay Co. was wholly inadequate to transport the thousands of 

 men gathered at Victoria, they embarked in canoes, row-boats and 

 make-shifts of their own construction. Hundreds of them were 

 never heard of again, and are supposed to have been drowned. 

 The mines worked at this time were all between Hope and Lytton, 

 and anyone who has gone down the Fraser Valley in a railway 

 train can picture in his mind's eye these indomitable men with 

 shovel and pick on back climbing up and down the cliffs that 

 border both sides oi the river. Many of them were lost, some 

 of them at Jackass Mountain falling a sheer thousand feet into 

 the river. 



At length a petty Indian war drove all the adventurers down 

 to Yale, and it became evident that if supplies were to be taken 

 to the forest a new route must be followed. The genius of 

 Douglas solved the difficulty. There was known to be an Indian 

 trail from the Harrison lakes to Jjilloet. There were 500 miners 

 in Victoria. Douglas proposed that in consideration of a deposit 

 of $25 by each person accepting the terms and agreeing to work 

 on the trail until it was finished the Hudson's Bay Company would 

 transport him to the point of commencement on the Harrison 

 river, feed him, and at the conclusion of the work furnish him with 



