124 THE LOG OF A TIMBER CRUISER 
-gler. The story goes that this man afterward told a 
wonderful tale of how, while hunting horses on the 
morning of the massacre,-he ran across a marvel- 
lously rich mass of gold bearing ‘‘float rock.’? He 
exhibited a piece of this as evidence of the truth of 
his story and announced an intention of returning 
before long to find the main vein. But he disap- 
peared shortly after without leaving any more in- 
formation than that. 
This is the local legend, and many have been the 
hopeful prospectors to toil away an arduous season 
in fruitless search for the fabulously rich ‘‘nigger 
diggins,’’ as they were called. We contributed our 
mite of labour to this myth, but found no gold. 
Brown, however, did discover in Vic’s Park an old 
nearly decomposed army pack saddle, and nearby 
the bones of the animal which had, we supposed, 
carried it. 
The park was also an excellent lookout point. The 
surrounding country could be seen in all its wild 
magnificence. And, as we gazed, something of its 
wildness seemed to disappear. The grandeur, the 
compelling solemnity of its spacious outlines, entered 
our souls. There was a strangely familiar effect 
apparent in the shapes of the vast, eroded rocks, in 
the slender pinnacles, the pillar like cliff formation, 
the whole grave spirit of the place. Frazer of all 
of us first hit it when he called the conception of the 
canyon ‘‘Gothic.’? That was it, indubitably. We 
were amid a multitude of temples. The true spirit 
