de more than enough money out of it and
its inhabitants. The Indians, though never quite to be trusted, were,
and are, not so warlike as their neighbours far to the south of the
forty-ninth parallel, such as the Sioux and Apaches, and naturally were
so innocent of the value of the furs and skins they brought into the
trading ports and forts as to be vilely cheated, in accordance with all
the best traditions of white men dealing with ignorant and commercially
unsophisticated savages. Guns and rifles being the objects most desired
by the Indian, he was made to pay for them, and to pay an almost
incredible price, as it seems to us now, for the company made sure of
three or four hundred per cent, at the very least, and occasionally
more; so that a ten shilling Birmingham musket brought in several pounds
when the pelts for which it was exchanged were sold in the London
market.

Their dominion of exclusion passed away with the discovery of gold in
Cariboo, and the consequent assumption of direct rule by the Government.
The palmy days of mining are looked back on with great regret by the old
miners, and many are the stories I have heard by the camp fire or the
hotel bar, which explained how it was that the narrator was still poor,
and how So-and-so became rich. There were few men who were successful in
keeping what they had made by luck or hard work, yet gold dust flew
round freely, and provisions were at famine prices. I knew one man who
said he had paid forty-two dollars (or nearly nine pounds) for six
pills. They were dear but necessary; and as the man who possessed them
had a corner in drugs, he was able to name his price. At that time, too,
some men made large sums of money by mere physical labour, and for
packing food on their backs to the mines they received a dollar for
every pound weight they brought in.

An acquaintance of mine, who is now an hotel-keeper at Kamloops, was a
living example of the strange freaks fortune played men in Cariboo. He
was offered a share in a mine for nothing, but refused it, and bought
into another. Gold was taken out of the first one to the tune of 50,000
dollars, and the other took all the money invested in it and never
returned a cent. He was in despair about one mine, and tried to sell out
in vain. He was thinking of giving up his share for nothing, when gold
was found in quantities. I think he makes more out of whisky, however,
than he ever did at Cariboo, though he still hankers afte