stood the postoffice. Only a
fringe of settlement went beyond the company's farm. The fort was
sound asleep, secure in an eternal certainty that the domain which it
guarded would never be overrun by American settlers as California and
Oregon had been. The little Admiralty cruisers which lay at Esquimalt
were guarantee that New Caledonia should never be stampeded into a
republic by an inrush of aliens. Then, as now, it was Victoria's boast
that it was more English than England.

So passed Christmas of '57 with plum-pudding and a roasted ox and
toasts to the crown and the company, though we cannot be quite sure
that the company was not put before the crown in the souls of the
fur-traders.

Then, in March 1858, just when Victoria felt most secure as the capital
of a perpetual fur realm, something happened. A few Yankee prospectors
had gone down on the Hudson's Bay steamer _Otter_ to San Francisco in
February with gold dust and nuggets from New Caledonia to exchange for
money at the mint. The Hudson's Bay men had thought nothing of this.
Other treasure-seekers had come to New Caledonia before and had gone
back to San Francisco disappointed. But, in March, these {8} men
returned to Victoria. And with them came a mad rabble of gold-crazy
prospectors. A city of tents sprang up overnight round Victoria. The
smithy was besieged for picks, for shovels, for iron ladles. Men stood
in long lines for their turn at the trading-store. By canoe, by
dugout, by pack-horse, and on foot, they planned to ascend the Fraser,
and they mobbed the company for passage to Langley by the first steamer
out from Victoria. Goods were paid for in cash. Before Finlayson
could believe his own eyes, he had two million dollars in his safe,
some of it for purchases, some of it on deposit for safe keeping.
Though the company gave no guarantee to the depositors and simply
sealed each man's leather pouch as it was placed in the safe, no
complaint was ever made against it of dishonesty or unfair treatment.

Without waiting instructions from England and with poignant memory of
Oregon, Governor Douglas at once clapped on a licence of twenty-one
shillings a month for mining privileges under the British crown. Thus
he obtained a rough registration of the men going to the up-country;
but thousands passed Victoria altogether and went in by pack-train from
Okanagan or rafted across from Puget Sound. {9} The month of March had
not ended when the firs