on the company. Gold had begun to
collect its toll, and the price appalled every soul. Who would be the
next? How soon would the unknown river turn west and south? Where was
Fort George? What perils yet lay between the fort and the gold camp?

As the heavy mists lifted at daybreak, the travellers observed that the
river was narrowing again and that the wooded banks had begun to fly
past very swiftly. There was no mistaking the signs. They were
approaching more rapids. But the trick of guiding the craft down
rapids had now been learned; so the flotilla rode the furious waters
unharmed for fifteen miles.

{81}

It was almost dark when canoes and rafts swung round a curve in the
river and saw a flag waving above the little walled fur-post of Fort
George. The tired wanderers were welcomed in by clerks too amazed to
speak, while a howling chorus of husky-dogs set up their serenade. A
young Englishman, who had joined the Overlanders at St Paul, died from
the effects of exposure a few minutes after being carried into the
fort. Next morning the body was rolled in blankets, placed in a canoe,
and buried under a rude wooden cross, with stones piled above the grave
to prevent the ravaging of huskies and wolves.

The chief factor was away, but the young clerks in charge sent Indians
along to pilot the Overlanders through the rapids below Fort George,
known as the most dangerous on the Fraser. These rapids, it will be
recalled, had wrecked Alexander Mackenzie and had almost cost Simon
Fraser his life. But the treasure-seekers did not have to go as far
south as Alexandria, where Mackenzie had turned back. With guides who
knew the waters, they ran the rapids below Fort George safely, and
moored at Quesnel, the entrance to Cariboo, on the 11th of
September--four months after they had left Canada.

{82}

Quesnel was at this time a rude settlement of perhaps a dozen log
shacks--chiefly bunkhouses and provision-stores. North of Yale the
Cariboo Road had not yet been opened, and all provisions had been
brought in from the lower Fraser by pack-horse and dog-train at
enormous cost and risk. Food sold at extortionate prices. A meal cost
two dollars and fifty cents, for beans, bacon, and coffee. Salmon, of
course, was cheap. Fortunately, there was little whisky; so, though
tattered miners were everywhere in the woods, order was maintained
without vigilance committees. On one spectacle the far-travelled
ragged Overl